South Carolina's 30 day rule is about other states' certificates, not yours

The Bottom Line for South Carolina LLCs

Order it from Business Entities Online, where the price is fixed by statute and the office publishes a warning that anyone charging you a multiple of it is not the state. The thing worth getting right is timing, and the timing rule people quote here points the other way.

The Secretary of State reports the reasons it most often rejects filings, and near the top of that list is a company from another state that applied to register in South Carolina and attached a home state certificate more than thirty days old. That rule binds companies coming in, and the certificate it judges is the one their own state issued them. It says nothing about the shelf life of the certificate South Carolina hands you. If yours is going to Georgia or North Carolina, their rule governs it. The distinction matters in a practical way, because a South Carolina owner who has been told certificates expire here in thirty days will buy documents they never needed.

What South Carolina Actually Calls It

The document is officially the Certificate of Existence, issued by South Carolina Secretary of State, though South Carolina's own pages also call it a certificate of good standing. The two names mean the same paper. Ask a bank or another state's filing office for a certificate of good standing and this is what you send them.

By statute a certificate of existence for an LLC must include the company's name, that it is duly organized under South Carolina law with its date of organization and duration, that all fees, taxes and penalties owed to the State have been paid where that payment is reflected in the Secretary of State's records and nonpayment affects existence, and that articles of termination have not been filed. The Secretary of State describes it more plainly as a certificate stating that an entity exists and is in good standing with that office.

South Carolina also uses Certificate of Good Standing, Certificate of Existence or Authority (the label on the Secretary of State's price table) for documents in this family.

Why You Need One

Foreign registration produces most of these orders, and South Carolina watches the same transaction from the other side every working day. After that come lenders, who ask at the credit decision rather than at account opening, so a South Carolina LLC can bank for years without ever being asked. Buyers and their counsel ask during diligence on a sale, and so does an investor putting money in for the first time. A commercial landlord sometimes asks a young company before signing a lease. Professional licensing boards ask less often than owners expect, since they hold their own records of who is licensed and look there first.

What It Costs in South Carolina

South Carolina charges $10 for the Certificate of Existence.

Where this fee comes from: S.C. Code 33-44-1204(a)(13): application for certificate of existence or authorization: ten dollars.

How to Order It

You can order the Certificate of Existence online.

South Carolina does not publish a turnaround time for the Certificate of Existence, so this page does not quote one.

Order it on the South Carolina site

Ordered through the Business Entities Online Document Request system after searching for the entity by name.

There is one online document request system and it is the whole story: search the entity, choose the certificate, pay. The friction sits at the front of that rather than the end. If the record does not show the company in good standing, the request comes back as a rejection rather than as an explanation, so check the entity's status in the same search screen before you pay for anything. The other thing to know is the pricing. The fee is fixed by the LLC statute rather than set by the office, and the Secretary of State publishes a scam warning because South Carolina businesses receive letters offering to obtain the certificate for them at a large multiple of it. Going direct is the entire saving, and there is no step in the process that needs a middleman.

1. 1

   Check the entity's status before you pay anything

   The Secretary of State refuses a request for a company its records do not show in good standing, and refusing is on its own published list of common rejections. The search screen shows you the answer for free.

2. 2

   Open Business Entities Online and find the LLC

   Search the entity by name in the document request system. Confirm you have the right record, since the state's index carries plenty of similar names and the certificate will carry whichever one you clicked.

3. 3

   Request the certificate and pay the statutory fee

   Choose the certificate from the document request options and pay at the point of request. The amount is set by the LLC statute rather than by the office, which is why it does not move from year to year.

4. 4

   Order it late in the packet, not early

   If the certificate is going into a foreign registration application, assemble everything else first. Several states, South Carolina included, judge the certificate's date against the day the application arrives rather than the day you bought it.

5. 5

   Read the name and the date before you send it

   Check the entity name against the name on the application it is going into, letter for letter, and note the issue date so you know what window you are working inside.

What Puts You Out of Standing in South Carolina

South Carolina imposes no annual report on LLCs, so a missed report is not what puts one out of standing here. No separate tax clearance from a revenue agency is part of it.

The certificate is issued off the Secretary of State's own records; 33-44-208(b)(3) recites tax payment only where that payment is reflected in the records of the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State does publish a Department of Revenue clearance step, but for a different filing: For applications for reinstatement of a business dissolved by administrative action, a letter from tax compliance for the S.C. Department of Revenue must accompany the application for reinstatement. Separately, 33-44-809 lets the Secretary of State begin administrative dissolution when a company does not pay a fee, tax, or penalty imposed by this chapter or other law within sixty days after it is due, so unpaid tax can eventually cost an LLC the certificate, but not as a clearance step in ordering it.

The request is refused for an entity that is not in good standing. The Secretary of State lists among common rejection reasons related to document requests: A certificate of good standing was requested for an entity that is not in good standing with the Secretary of State's Office.

South Carolina asks less of an LLC at the filing office than most people assume. The LLC act's own fee schedule carries no annual report line, and the statutory contents of the certificate are keyed to whether the company was duly organized, to payments the Secretary of State's records actually reflect, and to whether articles of termination have been filed. That is a short list, and it is why South Carolina LLCs can go years without touching the Secretary of State at all. What ends standing is the slower route. An unpaid fee, tax or penalty left long enough triggers the administrative dissolution machinery in the LLC act, and getting back from that is a separate process with another agency involved in it. A dissolved company cannot buy this certificate. Reinstatement is the prerequisite, not the paperwork you were hoping to skip.

How Long It Stays Good in South Carolina

South Carolina publishes nothing about how long the Certificate of Existence stays current. Whoever asked you for it does: banks, lenders and other states' filing offices each set their own recency rule, and that window is theirs, not South Carolina's. Ask what it is, and order the certificate once you know.

The thirty day rule you will hear quoted in South Carolina belongs to incoming applications. A company formed elsewhere that wants to register here has to attach a dated certificate from its home state that is not more than thirty days old, and the Secretary of State counts stale ones among the commonest reasons it returns applications. Read that as a warning about somebody else's document rather than a countdown running on yours. For your own certificate the operative deadline is whatever the recipient set. Where South Carolina's rule is genuinely useful to you is in the other direction: if you are registering your South Carolina LLC in a state with a similar condition, order the certificate as one of the last steps in assembling the packet rather than one of the first. A certificate that sits in a folder while the rest of the application gets finished is exactly the thing that gets an application sent back.

Using It Outside the United States

For use abroad, South Carolina Secretary of State's Office, Attn: Authentications will authenticate the certificate with an apostille for $5 per document.

Who to Ask in South Carolina

The South Carolina Secretary of State's Office in Columbia issues the certificate and runs Business Entities Online. It is also the office that publishes the rejection list, which is worth ten minutes of reading before you file anything more involved than a certificate order. Documents heading overseas go to the same office's authentications desk rather than to another agency. The South Carolina Department of Revenue is where tax questions belong, and it is also the agency that has to confirm tax compliance before a dissolved company can be reinstated, so an owner whose certificate order was refused often ends up dealing with both offices in sequence rather than one.

Sources

• sos.sc.gov/online-filings/business-entities/document-request-online
• sos.sc.gov/faqs-about-business-entities
• sos.sc.gov/online-filings/business-entities
• scstatehouse.gov/code/t33c044.php
• sos.sc.gov/services-and-filings/apostilles

Every figure on this page was read from a South Carolina government source, not from a formation service. Confidence in this record: high. See our editorial policy for how these are verified and corrected.