This guide is general information, not legal or tax advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. It reports what each state publishes about filing deadlines, fees, and the consequences of missing them, with the sources this page cites. It cannot tell you what your own company owes: the date turns on when and where you formed, states change these rules between our reviews, and in several states an entity-level tax falls due in a year when no report does. Confirm your own dates with the filing office named on this page before you rely on one here, because the penalty for missing a deadline can be administrative dissolution of the company.
Frequently Asked Questions
South Carolina doesn't require LLCs to file annual reports or pay a recurring Secretary of State fee after formation. For a pass-through LLC, the mandatory state expense is the $110 filing fee paid when you register.
That is genuinely cheap over time. California charges every LLC an $800 annual franchise tax, so five years of South Carolina compliance costs less than a single California year, and New York's annual LLC filing fee is graduated on New York source gross income up to $4,500 for the largest filers. You have no Secretary of State deadline to track once your LLC is active.
Two things still apply. An LLC that elects corporate tax treatment owes the Department of Revenue a $25 CL-1 initial License Fee plus an annual License Fee of 0.1% of capital and paid-in surplus plus $15, minimum $25. And you may still owe federal self-employment and income taxes plus any local business license your county or city requires. Confirm your classification with your accountant, then file your Articles of Organization with the Secretary of State to start under this structure.
South Carolina requires every LLC to keep a registered agent with a physical street address, not a PO box, in the state at all times, and an LLC that stops maintaining one exposes itself to administrative dissolution by the Secretary of State.
Dissolution is not instant. Under S.C. Code Section 33-44-810 the Secretary of State serves notice of the ground, and the LLC has sixty days after service to cure before dissolution is entered. The catch is that notice goes to the registered agent, so an LLC without a working agent is often the last to learn its status is at risk.
The consequences are practical rather than dramatic: legal papers get served on an address you no longer watch, default judgments become possible, and lenders, banks, and counterparties who pull your entity record will see a status that is not active. Reinstatement after administrative dissolution costs $25, plus whatever fees or taxes triggered it.
Verify your current registered agent record on the Secretary of State website and file a statement of change, $10, if anything has moved since formation.
South Carolina LLCs have no annual filing or renewal fee, so you can hold good standing indefinitely with no recurring state filing after formation. What you must keep current is your registered agent record: when the agent or the designated office changes, file a statement of change with the Secretary of State, which costs $10.
Internally, keep records including your operating agreement, member decisions, and resolutions documenting membership changes or manager appointments. South Carolina does not require you to report membership or manager changes to the state, but documenting them supports your liability protection and settles who had authority to act.
The one live risk is on the tax side. Section 33-44-809 lets the Secretary of State begin administrative dissolution when a fee, tax, or penalty imposed by the LLC Act or other law goes unpaid for sixty days after it is due, so a Department of Revenue liability, not a missed report, is the usual route to losing the entity.
Next step: verify your registered agent record with the Secretary of State, then confirm with your accountant which Department of Revenue obligations apply to your tax classification.
Yes. You change your registered agent by filing a statement of change of designated office or agent with the South Carolina Secretary of State's Business Filings division. The statutory fee is $10, payable when you submit it. Once accepted, your new registered agent can receive service of process on the LLC's behalf. Many owners underestimate how much this matters. If the record is stale, lawsuit papers and official notices go to an address nobody is watching, which is exactly how default judgments and unexpected administrative dissolutions happen, and the Secretary of State's sixty-day notice to cure under Section 33-44-810 also goes to that same agent. Since South Carolina LLCs file no annual report, keeping the agent record current is one of your only ongoing interactions with the state. To proceed, visit the Secretary of State's website at sos.sc.gov, complete the change of registered agent filing with your LLC name, current agent details, and new agent information, and submit it with the $10 fee.
Sources
Each entry below is a document recorded in our verified South Carolina sources, and each entry says what the document is. Some statutory text is read from an accurate mirror rather than from the state's own host, and those say so.
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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.
