Your South Carolina LLC Is Doing Business in Another State
The short answer. You keep one LLC. It stays registered in South Carolina, which charges no recurring state filing fee, though the LLC keeps whatever obligations South Carolina attaches to it, and a state that finds you are doing business there adds its own registration and its own filings on top. Whether your activity counts is decided by that state's own rule, not by this page. Of the 47 other states that have one figure to compare, 29 cost more in year-one registration than South Carolina's own first-year total of $110, and 18 cost less. Tennessee and Washington are outside those figures: Tennessee's fee scales with member count from $300, and Washington's $180 is before back fees, so neither has one figure to compare.
What you keep paying in South Carolina
Every South Carolina fee behind these figures is broken out on what an LLC costs in South Carolina.
What a second state adds
These are the states closest to South Carolina’s own cost line, plus the three dearest to enter. Each figure is that state’s first-year registration cost for an out-of-state LLC, beside what it charges every year after. Whether your activity counts as doing business there depends on the facts, and each state defines it differently.
| State | Year one to register | State charges, each year after | Against your year one ($110) |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Dakota | $750 | $55/yr | $640 more |
| Texas | $750 | None | $640 more |
| Massachusetts | $500 | $520/yr | $390 more |
| Connecticut | $120 | $80/yr | $10 more |
| Kansas | $115 | $45/yr | $5 more |
| Indiana | $108 | $15.50/yr | $2 less |
| Missouri | $105 | None | $5 less |
| Colorado | $100 | $25/yr | $10 less |
| Iowa | $100 | $15/yr | $10 less |
| Idaho | $100 | None | $10 less |
| Maryland | $100 | $300/yr | $10 less |
A state charge of None is not a tax of none. The column is the recurring charge our fee dataset records, and a state that asks for no recurring filing may still levy an entity-level tax that sits outside it.
What we verified about South Carolina's own costs
Our notes, from South Carolina's published fee schedules and statutes.
South Carolina is a genuine one-and-done state for LLC filings: $110 for the Articles of Organization under S.C. Code § 33-44-1204(a)(1) and no annual report and no annual fee to the Secretary of State thereafter, so recurring Secretary of State cost is $0. Statutory add-ons are cheap, $25 to reserve an LLC name for a non-renewable 120 days, $10 for a certificate of existence, $10 to change the designated office or agent, $25 to reinstate after administrative dissolution, and $2 per certificate plus $1 for the first page and $0.50 per additional page for copies. An LLC that elects corporate tax treatment breaks the pattern: it must file the CL-1 with a $25 initial License Fee and then pay an annual License Fee with a $25 minimum to the Department of Revenue.
"No annual report" is only true at the Secretary of State, and only for pass-through LLCs. The Department of Revenue is explicit that an LLC not taxed as a corporation escapes both the annual report and the License Fee, but an LLC that elects C-corp or S-corp treatment must file the CL-1 with a $25 initial License Fee within 60 days of doing business and then pay an annual License Fee of 0.1% of capital and paid-in surplus plus $15, minimum $25 per year.
You can still be administratively dissolved with no report to miss. S.C. Code § 33-44-809 authorizes administrative dissolution whenever an LLC fails to pay any fee, tax or penalty imposed by the LLC Act or other law within sixty days of its due date, so a Department of Revenue liability, not a missed Secretary of State filing, is the usual path to losing the entity.
Name reservations expire and cannot be renewed. South Carolina reserves an LLC name for "a non-renewable one hundred and twenty (120) day period" for $25, so a reservation taken too early simply lapses and the $25 has to be spent again under a different application.
Frequently Asked Questions
Edmond Hui · Founder, MyStateLLC
Edmond Hui is a software engineer and serial entrepreneur based in New York who has founded multiple online businesses across e-commerce, media, and information publishing. Before transitioning into tech, he spent years as a commercial real estate professional closing deals totaling over 100,000 square feet, giving him firsthand experience with business formation and entity structuring. He built MyStateLLC to provide the free, state-specific LLC guidance he wished existed when forming his own companies.