The full North Carolina LLC cost table
| Cost | Amount | Required? |
|---|---|---|
| North Carolina state filing fee | $125 one-time | Yes |
| Recurring state cost | $203/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 | $328 as your own agent · $453 with a service | — |
| Five-year total | $1,140 as your own agent · $1,765 with a service | — |
$203 filed online (includes the $3 electronic-filing fee); $200 by paper.
The $203 annual report is the headline number
Forming costs $125 — unremarkable. Then every year, starting the year after formation, the Annual Report bill arrives: $203 filed online ($200 by paper plus the odd inversion that the electronic 'convenience' costs $3 more). Only a handful of states charge more to simply remain registered, and none of North Carolina's neighbors come close — Georgia keeps an LLC for $60, Virginia for $50. It's due April 15, same day as your taxes, filed with the Secretary of State (not the Department of Revenue, a distinction that misroutes a surprising number of filings). Miss it and the state mails a 60-day notice before administrative dissolution — more warning than Florida gives, but the meter is real.
What you're not paying
The recurring sting is softened by what's absent: no franchise tax on a standard LLC — North Carolina's franchise tax reaches corporations and only touches an LLC that elects C-corp treatment — and a flat personal income tax of 3.99% (2026) on pass-through profits, one of the lowest rates in the Southeast and still scheduled to step down. So the five-year arithmetic reads: $125 + four reports ≈ $937 in state fees, expensive as big states go, in exchange for one of the region's lightest income-tax touches on the profits themselves. Whether that trade flatters your LLC depends on whether it's earning yet.
Our LLC cost calculator computes first-year and five-year totals for all 51 jurisdictions from the same verified dataset as this page — including North Carolina — and the full table is downloadable as CSV.