Tennessee llc cost calculator

The advertised cost of forming an LLC is the least useful number in the process. A free formation package still leaves the state filing fee, and the fee that matters most is the one nobody quotes: the annual report or franchise fee you pay every year for as long as the company exists.

The tool above projects both. It is also the one calculator on this site that looks nothing up, and the reason is worth stating plainly before you use it.

Why does this tool ask me for the fees?

Because state filing fees and annual report fees are not yet in our data set, and we do not publish figures we have not sourced. Rather than guess at 51 different fee schedules, the tool takes them as inputs. Get them from your Secretary of State website, which is the only authoritative source and the only one that is current.

The seven inputs are State, State filing fee, Annual report or franchise fee, Registered agent per year, Formation service, one off, Publication cost, one off and Years to project.

One honest note about the first of those. The State selector is present for consistency with the other tools on this site, but the calculation does not read it. Changing the state does not change a single figure in the result, because there is no fee data behind it. Everything comes from what you type.

How this calculator works

The engine sorts your inputs into one-off costs and recurring costs, then projects.

Year one is the sum of everything: filing fee, formation service, publication cost, the annual report fee and the registered agent fee. Every year after year one is the recurring pair only: annual report plus registered agent. The total over the projection is year one plus the recurring amount multiplied by the remaining years. The average per year is that total divided by the number of years.

The breakdown table underneath sorts the same five costs into a one-off column and an every-year column, so you can see at a glance which decisions are permanent. Filing fee, formation service and publication are charged once. Annual report and registered agent are charged forever.

Two behaviours to know. The projection accepts 1 to 10 years. And year one includes a full annual report fee, which not every state charges in the first year, so if your state gives a first-year exemption the year one figure is overstated by that amount.

What does a worked example look like?

Because we publish no state fees, the figures below are illustrative and not attributed to any state. Suppose the fees you copied from your Secretary of State page are a $150 filing fee and a $60 annual report, you hire a registered agent at $125 a year, you file the paperwork yourself, there is no publication requirement, and you project five years.

The headline is $335, and the number that actually matters is $185. Over five years the recurring side is $740 of the $1,075 total, so more than two-thirds of the cost arrives after the exciting part is over.

What does acting as my own registered agent save?

The registered agent line, every year, compounded across the projection. Using the same figures with the agent fee set to zero:

A $625 difference across five years on a company whose first-year cost was $335. That is the largest single lever most one-person LLCs have.

It is not free, though. A registered agent must have a physical address in the state and be available during business hours, and that address goes on the public record. Acting as your own agent means publishing your home address if you work from home, and being personally reachable for service of process. Paid agents exist mostly to solve those two problems, and the comparison of formation services covers who bundles the agent into the price.

What costs does it miss?

Everything that is not a state fee or a formation cost. In particular:

How do I use it, step by step?

1. Open your Secretary of State business filings page and find the current articles of organization fee. Type it into State filing fee.
2. Find the annual report or franchise fee on the same site and type it into Annual report or franchise fee. Check the frequency: a few states bill biennially, in which case halve it for an annual view.
3. Enter a Registered agent per year price if you are hiring one, or zero if you will act as your own.
4. Enter a Formation service, one off price only if you are paying someone to file. Many packages advertise a free tier where you pay the state fee alone.
5. Enter a Publication cost, one off only if your state requires newspaper publication. A few states do, New York among them, and it can cost more than the filing fee itself.
6. Set Years to project to how long you realistically expect to run the company, then read the every-year figure rather than the year one figure.

Common mistakes

Budgeting for year one and stopping. Formation is the cheap part in most states. The recurring pair is what you sign up for indefinitely, and it is due whether the company trades or not.

Assuming a free formation package means a free LLC. The state fee is still payable, and free tiers usually bundle only the first year of anything recurring. Read what renews and at what price.

Forgetting the annual report deadline. Missing it costs a late fee and, in many states, loss of good standing, which then costs a reinstatement fee. That is the one avoidable expense in the whole exercise.

Forming in a different state to save money. If you operate where you live, you will usually need to register as a foreign LLC in your home state anyway, paying both sets of fees and keeping two agents. The saving disappears and the paperwork doubles.

Expecting the tool to know your state's fees. It cannot. There is deliberately no state selector here: every figure in the result is one you typed, taken from your Secretary of State.

Where this tool is the wrong one

It will not tell you whether to form an LLC. That is a liability and structure question, and the Small Business Administration guide to choosing a business structure is a better starting point than a cost projection.

It does not model tax. An LLC is not a tax classification: a single-member LLC is taxed as a sole proprietorship by default and pays exactly the same self-employment tax on the same profit as an unincorporated freelancer. An S corporation election changes that, and adds payroll filings whose cost is not in this calculation either.

It also assumes stable fees across the projection. States raise filing and franchise fees, and a ten-year projection built on today figure is a straight line through a moving target.

Before you file

• Confirm the current filing fee on your Secretary of State site, not on a formation service page
• Confirm the annual report fee and whether it is annual or biennial
• Check the first annual report due date and put it in a calendar
• Decide on a registered agent, weighing the fee against publishing your home address
• Check whether your state has a publication requirement before you commit to a budget
• Check city and county licence requirements, which the state filing does not cover
• Open a separate business bank account so the separation you paid for is real

Fee schedules change by legislation and occasionally at short notice, and several states have restructured franchise taxes in recent years. Because we do not publish these figures, there is nothing here for us to keep current on your behalf: check the state site each year when the annual report falls due. Our approach to what we will and will not publish is set out in the methodology.