The Texas Secretary of State prices its filings on one published document, Form 806, and the entry that brings a company into existence covers more than one kind of company. Form 205 is the certificate of formation for a limited liability company. Form 201 is the certificate of formation for a for-profit corporation. Both fall inside a single line reading Certificate of formation for a Texas entity (except nonprofit corporation, cooperative association, PA or LP) (Forms 201, 203, 205, 206)
, and that line is priced at $300.
Which is worth stating plainly, because the assumption running the other way shapes decisions. Nothing on that schedule makes either structure the budget option. A founder weighing one against the other is weighing liability, tax treatment and how the business will be governed, and the payment window has no view on any of it.
What the schedule does price differently is anything that is not an ordinary trading company. A professional association or a limited partnership, on Forms 204 and 207, is $750. A nonprofit corporation on Form 202, or a cooperative association, is $25. Any instrument the schedule gives no express fee for, nonprofits and cooperative associations aside, is $15. Corrections later carry their own prices: a certificate of amendment is $150 and a certificate of termination is $40. The document itself is marked as revised in October 2025, and that marking is what to check before relying on any figure on it, since the schedule moves as one document rather than line by line.
The routes in, and what speed costs
Certificates of formation can be filed online through SOSDirect, which the office describes as available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Its general filing page lists three routes altogether: online through SOSDirect or SOSUpload, by mail to the Corporations Section, and in person at the James Earl Rudder Office Building in Austin. A fax number appears in the office contact block printed on the fee schedule, and fax is not among the submission methods that page lists. Payment by card is accepted on American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa.
Speed is a separate purchase and a steep one. Standard expedite processing of a document submitted for filing is $50. Next day expedite is $500 and same day expedite is $750. Preclearance of a filing instrument is $50.
What the office does not publish, and what this article will not supply
Three questions a first-time filer asks have no answer in the material consulted here, and each is left open, because a plausible number does more damage than an admission.
The first is how long a formation filing takes to come back. Neither Secretary of State frequently asked questions page consulted publishes a turnaround for one. Turnarounds are published, but for a different product entirely: certificates of fact and certified copies of imaged documents are emailed back within two hours, copies of documents that were never imaged can take up to three business days, and orders not placed through SOSDirect carry a $10 expedite handling charge each. Reading any of that across to a formation filing would be a guess wearing a citation.
The second is what paying by card adds to the total. Form 806 names the four card brands and states no percentage, and neither frequently asked questions page states one either. A convenience charge is widely reported. It would be disclosed at the payment step inside SOSDirect.
The third is whether anyone examines the substance of what is filed. Nothing on the pages consulted addresses that in either direction. This article therefore describes the filing as neither an approval nor a review, since both words would hand a reader a reassurance nobody verified.
A trading name is a second record, often at a different counter
A company operating under anything other than the name on its certificate needs an assumed name certificate as well, and where that certificate is recorded turns on what the business is. The Tarrant County Clerk sets out the split and dates it. Since September 1, 2019, under HB 3609 of the 86th Legislature, incorporated entities including corporations, limited partnerships and limited liability companies file with the Texas Secretary of State. At that office the form is 503 and the fee is $25. Giving the name up again is Form 504, at $10.
Unincorporated businesses still record with the county clerk where business is conducted, and there the price stops being a state matter. Dallas County records one for $23.00, with fifty cents added for every owner beyond the first, and a further $2.00 where the acknowledgment is taken by a deputy rather than by a notary. Tarrant County records one for $20 where a single owner is involved, adds fifty cents per further owner, and applies a 3 percent charge to payment by card. Two adjacent counties, two schedules, and no basis for expecting a third to match either. Both sides of that split are worked through in the guide to where a trading name gets recorded.
The federal number costs nothing and is rationed anyway
An employer identification number comes from the Internal Revenue Service and carries no charge. The agency states it as a warning rather than as a fact, telling readers Beware of websites that charge for an EIN. You never have to pay a fee for an EIN.
Its online application is not open around the clock. In Eastern time it runs Monday to Friday from 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. the following day, Saturday from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., and Sunday from 6:00 p.m. to midnight. The applicant has to be a domestic organization formed or created in the United States or its territories, with a principal place of business in the United States, and the person filling the form in has to be the responsible party in control of the entity. Only one number is issued per responsible party per day, so anyone standing up several companies at once is spread across several days by arithmetic.
Which businesses are obliged to hold a number is a separate question, and the IRS page consulted here answers how to get one rather than who needs one. That stays with the agency. What is established is that the number gates other doors: registration as a state vendor on the Centralized Master Bidders List requires an EIN issued by the IRS, so a company intending to sell to Texas agencies needs one before it can appear on the list at all. Where that registration sits among the other ways into public work is mapped in the guide to where contracts are actually advertised.
May 15 arrives whether or not there is tax to pay
Franchise tax reaches each taxable entity that is formed in or doing business in Texas, which the Comptroller of Public Accounts traces to Tax Code Section 171.001. Forming a company in the state is enough to bring it inside that description.
Most new companies will owe nothing. For 2026 and 2027 the no tax due threshold is $2,650,000, having stood at $2,470,000 for 2024 and 2025. Those years are printed on the Comptroller's page as part of the figure and belong in any statement of it: the threshold is fixed for that window and has already moved once. Anyone preparing a 2028 report should treat the number as expired until the agency republishes it.
Owing nothing and filing nothing are separate positions, and only the first of them is available. The Comptroller states that an entity at or below the threshold is not required to file a No Tax Due Report and is required to file Form 05-102, the Public Information Report, or Form 05-167, the Ownership Information Report. The annual report falls due on May 15, and where May 15 lands on a weekend or a holiday the due date becomes the next business day. Above the threshold the rate for 2026 and 2027 is 0.375 percent on retail or wholesale, 0.75 percent on everything else, and 0.331 percent under the EZ computation. Which structures sit outside the tax altogether is not stated here, because the agency's own frequently asked questions page cites the statute and refers the question onward without listing them. The threshold and the report itself are taken further in the account of what falls due in May.
Selling something taxable is a trigger of its own
A sales and use tax permit is not a consequence of forming anything. The Comptroller's application page sets the test on what the applicant actually does: Complete this application if you are engaged in business in Texas; and you sell or lease tangible personal property in Texas; or you sell taxable services in Texas.
A company doing none of that never reaches the question, and a sole trader doing it reaches the question without having formed a company at all.
Applications run through the Comptroller's eSystems portal, and an applicant without a Social Security number uses form AP-201, the Texas Application, sent by email or by fax to the addresses given on that page. Applicants are told to allow 2 to 3 weeks to receive the permit. Texas imposes 6.25 percent state sales and use tax on most retail sales, leases and rentals of goods. Local jurisdictions may layer their own charge over that one, to a further 2 percent, which caps the combined figure at 8.25 percent.
What the permit costs is the one item deliberately missing above. Every guide calls it free. Neither the permit page nor the sales tax page consulted states a fee or the absence of one, and neither mentions security, so no figure appears here and no reassurance in its place.
Nothing above decides whether the doors can open
An entity record, a trading name, a federal number and two state tax accounts still leave the most physical question unanswered. Whether one specific suite at one specific street address can be occupied at all, and used for the trade the company has in mind, is a municipal decision, and the metroplex holds no common answer to it. Every city site needed for the research behind these pages blocked automated retrieval, so no fee, no timeline and no department name appears here. That would remain the honest position even with the pages open, because the requirement shifts with land use and with zoning inside a single city, let alone across three of them.
One question deserves an answer in the second person, because it is the question that brings people to a page like this: the certificate has come back stamped, so are you finished? No. One record at one office is complete and nothing else is. Each item above belongs to a different counter with its own deadline, and none of them announces the others. The rest of that sequence sits across the section this article belongs to. The obligation arriving from outside it, the moment a company first pays somebody, is set out in what changes once a business starts paying wages, and the wider map is on the front page of this publication.