NY LLC Publication Requirement
Section 206 of the New York State Limited Liability Company Law requires that anyone forming an LLC in New York State or registering an out-of-state LLC to do business in NY, must publish a notice of that formation or registration in two separate newspapers. The newspapers must be located in the same county where the LLCs ‘office’ resides.
By hiring us as their New York registered agent service, many of our clients list our commercial address as their office address in order to publish in Auburn County and save thousands of dollars in publication costs.
When hiring us to form your NY LLC or be your NY registered agent, we list our county address as yours, and thus you can publish in any paper in Auburn. People in New York City pay upwards of $1500 to publish.
Even if your main business operations will be in NYC or anywhere in the state with high publication costs, there’s no reason to list that address as the county for publication reasons. We’re talking about an archaic requirement from many decades ago that no longer makes sense in our modern digital world.
The Facts About New York LLC Publishing:
You’re going to read a lot of weird stuff about NY LLC publishing because there are a lot of websites out there selling it and there are a lot of people mad they have to do it. Here’s a break down about NY LLC Publication requirements here:
- You’re supposed to publish in two newspapers within 120 days of forming or registering an LLC.
- You’re supposed to publish for six weeks.
- One newspaper can be a weekly publication (cheaper and smaller; think oddball newspaper you see at a small grocery store).
- One newspaper needs to be a daily publication (more expensive; think the main town newspaper).
- You’re supposed to publish in the county of your ‘Office’. Many people list our address as their address in Auburn County to publish for thousands less than more expensive newspapers.
- There are specific things you need to say in the newspaper. Think as if you were listing something for sale in the classifieds twenty years ago or posting a garage sale ad when the newspapers were relevant. It’s the same thing. You CAN abbreviate your ad though. The bare bones you have to say in the newspaper ad is:
- Name of the LLC
- Date the state gave you on your completed filing
- The county you want to list
- Street address you want to list
- That you’re okay with the NY SOS being designated for service of process and where the NY SOS can mail notices to (this is where you list us)
- When the LLC is set to dissolve (if it is)
- Who the registered agent is (us)
- The purpose of the LLC
- After you get done publishing, the newspaper will provide an Affidavit of Publication, and you send that to the New York Division of Corporations with a Certificate of Publication that carries a $60 filing fee.
- It used to be that an LLC couldn’t carry on a lawsuit unless it was published. The legislators, instead of abolishing this absurdity, clarified that an LLC can operate in court if it’s in court without publication, but that the LLC will be suspended and lose its ability to transact business in New York. BUT there is no mechanism to actually make an LLC lose its ability to transact business in New York. The Division of Corporations does not actively mark LLCs as inactive for failure to publish their LLC. So the new laws sound more scary, but fail to have the teeth to really do much of anything other than sound scary.
- Failure to publish your LLC does not ruin the liability protection your LLC is supposed to have.
- If an LLC is suspended for failing to publish, it can publish at any time and fix it, like it never was a problem.
Use Us as Your Registered Agent in New York:
There are a lot of reasons to use our registered agent service in New York. Mainly, when you list your address on your company filing with the New York Secretary of State, you create a permanent public record of where you’ve lived and had your business. For $100 a year, your company shows stability year after year and ten years from now, your competitors, your clients, your vendors, or someone you are potentially going to sell your company to, won’t be able to easily see that you rented a crappy office in the wrong part of town and you haven’t always looked as high end as you look now. Why show the world that instability?
But the biggest reason is that if you don’t hire a registered agent, the New York Secretary of State will deliver service of process to you by mail. How trustworthy is getting legal notices by mail? How overworked is the Secretary of State’s office? Do you really believe they will get you your important legal documents in a timely manner?
We scan all documents in real time to you from our Auburn office. There are a lot of other reasons to hire us for your New York Registered Agent Service.