The full New Jersey LLC cost table
| Cost | Amount | Required? |
|---|---|---|
| New Jersey state filing fee | $100 one-time | Yes |
| Recurring state cost | $75/yr — Annual Report | Yes |
| Registered agent | $0 as your own agent, or ~$125/yr for a service | Yes (one or the other) |
| EIN (federal tax ID) | $0 direct from the IRS | Usually |
| First-year total | $175 as your own agent · $300 with a service | — |
| Five-year total | $475 as your own agent · $1,100 with a service | — |
Formation fee cut from $125 to $100 effective July 1, 2026, per the Division of Revenue fee schedule.
Two filings to open, two agencies to keep happy
New Jersey charges $100 for the Certificate of Formation, cut from $125 on July 1, 2026 per the Division of Revenue fee schedule, under N.J.S.A. 42:2C-93, filed online with the Division of Revenue & Enterprise Services. That creates the entity; it does not register it. The second, free filing is NJ-REG, the tax and employer registration the state wants at least 15 business days before you start doing business, which produces the Business Registration Certificate you'll need to collect sales tax, hire, or get paid by a public body. Then the upkeep: a $75 Annual Report due by the last day of your formation-anniversary month, filed online. Miss two in a row and the state revokes the LLC after a 60-day notice, and a revoked LLC must be reinstated — every missed report plus reinstatement and late fees — before it can even be dissolved. None of that is unusual. What is unusual sits with a different agency.
The $150-per-owner fee that changes the arithmetic
The Division of Taxation's rule, in its own words: partnerships with more than two partners and income or loss from New Jersey sources may be subject to a $150 filing fee for each partner, up to a $250,000 maximum. An LLC taxed as a partnership — the default for any multi-member LLC — is a partnership for this purpose, and "partner" means anyone who received a K-1 or held an interest at any point in the year. So a two-owner LLC pays nothing; a three-owner LLC pays $450; five owners, $750. It is reported on the NJ-1065, due April 15 for calendar-year filers, and — the part that surprises people in year one — the state also requires an installment payment of 50% of the current year's fee toward the following year at the same time. A three-owner LLC's first NJ-1065 therefore carries $675, not $450. The fee can be apportioned for non-resident owners with no physical New Jersey nexus (Schedule J), and it is not prorated for a short year. The one relief: an LLC filing a final return pays the fee for that year but skips the prepayment.
Every other New Jersey LLC fee, from the statute
New Jersey is one of the few states whose LLC fees are written into the statute itself rather than an agency schedule, which makes them unusually easy to verify. These are the lines from N.J.S.A. 42:2C-93, checked September 12, 2026, with the formation and foreign-registration fees updated on September 26, 2026 to the Division of Revenue fee schedule. That schedule, updated July 1, 2026, lists $100 for both, matching the 2026 bill (A5325) that proposed cutting them from $125 from that date.
| Filing | Fee | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Certificate of Formation | $100 | Cut from $125 on July 1, 2026; filed online through the Division of Revenue |
| NJ-REG business & tax registration | $0 | Required before doing business; produces the Business Registration Certificate |
| Annual Report | $75 | Due by the last day of the formation-anniversary month |
| Partnership filing fee (3+ owners) | $150 per owner | Division of Taxation, with the NJ-1065; 50% prepayment of next year's fee due with it |
| Statement of change of registered agent | $25 | §93(a)(3) |
| Certificate of amendment / correction / restatement | $100 | §93(a)(4) |
| Certificate of dissolution | $100 | §93(a)(4); no tax clearance required for an LLC |
| Foreign LLC certificate of authority | $100 | Cut from $125 on July 1, 2026; an out-of-state LLC registering in New Jersey |
| Alternate (trade) name registration | $50 | §93(a)(1); same to renew |
| Name reservation | $50 | §93(a)(2) |
| Certificate of good standing | $50 | §93(a)(13); $100 for the long form listing every filing |
| Certified copy | $25 per copy | §93(a)(8), plus $10 first page / $2 per page for the copy itself |
| Same-day / 24-hour expedite | up to $50 / up to $25 | §93(b) |
The change-of-agent line is worth noticing: at $25 it is among the cheapest in the country (Texas charges $15, Nevada $60), so moving from being your own agent to a service, or between services, is never a reason to stay put. And the $100 dissolution is a self-service online filing with no tax clearance step for LLCs — our New Jersey dissolution guide walks through it, including why the state's own page makes it look harder than it is.
Income tax: pass-through, with an opt-in workaround
A standard New Jersey LLC pays no entity-level income tax and no franchise tax. Its profits pass through to the owners' NJ-1040 returns, where New Jersey's graduated rates run from 1.4% to 10.75% on income over $5 million. Since 2020 the state has offered the elective Pass-Through Business Alternative Income Tax (BAIT), which lets the LLC pay the tax at entity level so owners can deduct it federally around the SALT cap — useful for profitable multi-owner LLCs, irrelevant for most first-year businesses, and entirely optional. For a single-owner LLC, then, New Jersey's recurring state cost is genuinely the $75 report and nothing else; the state's reputation for expense comes from its income-tax rates and the partnership fee, not from its LLC fees.
Our LLC cost calculator computes first-year and five-year totals for all 51 jurisdictions from the same verified dataset as this page — including New Jersey — and the full table is downloadable as CSV.
The registered agent is the recurring cost most New Jersey fee tables leave out, and it is the one line on this page you actually choose. What a registered agent costs covers how the pricing works; the cheapest option in your state covers where the floor really sits, which is lower than most tables say.