How to Form an LLC in Florida (And What to Do Right After)

Filing a Florida LLC takes about fifteen minutes on Sunbiz and costs $125, and that is where most people stop. The LLC that actually protects you and saves you money is built in the weeks after the confirmation email, when you open the bank account, decide how the IRS will tax the company, and register with the agencies Florida expects to hear from.

Every fee and deadline below was checked against Sunbiz, the Department of Revenue, and the IRS in September 2026.

What Sunbiz actually asks for

A Florida LLC is created by filing Articles of Organization through Sunbiz's online filing system.

The name must end with "Limited Liability Company," "LLC," or "L.L.C." (licensed professionals use "PLLC"), and it must be distinguishable from every name already on state records. The state ignores punctuation and the entity suffix when it compares, so a name that differs from an existing one only by a comma or "Inc." is rejected.

The registered agent needs a physical Florida street address, no P.O. boxes, and must be available in business hours to accept lawsuits and notices. The LLC cannot be its own agent, but you can. Listing yourself at home works until you move or want your address out of a public database; a commercial agent solves both for an annual fee. You also list a principal office address and, optionally, the managers.

The effective date can be up to five business days before or 90 days after Sunbiz receives the filing. An LLC effective December 20 owes an Annual Report the next spring and, with two or more members, a stub-year partnership return; a January date avoids both.

The fee is $100 for the Articles plus $25 for the registered agent designation, $125 total. A certificate of status ($5) and certified copy ($30) are optional.

The operating agreement is where the real rules live

Florida does not require an operating agreement and never sees it, but under section 605.0105 of the Florida Statutes, wherever the agreement is silent the statute's generic defaults take over. Those defaults do not know that one partner contributed the truck and the other the customer list, or what happens when a member dies, divorces, or wants out, so a multi-member agreement should cover contributions, profit splits, voting, signing authority, and a buy-sell formula. A single-member LLC still needs a short one: banks ask for it, and it is evidence the company is separate from you.

EIN, bank account, and what "limited liability" actually covers

Get the EIN the day the Articles are approved; the IRS issues it free and immediately online. A single-member LLC with no employees technically does not need one, but get it anyway so vendors never see your Social Security number.

Open a business checking account before the first dollar of revenue arrives; the bank will want the Articles, the EIN letter, the operating agreement, and a beneficial ownership certification naming anyone who owns 25% or more plus one person who controls the company. That is a banking rule, and it still applies even though the federal BOI report no longer does for U.S. companies.

Then keep it separate. An LLC shields your personal assets from business debts only while you run it as a separate business: its own account and card, documented owner draws, no groceries on the company card. It never protects you from your own negligence, a personal guarantee, or payroll taxes withheld and not paid over. One Florida-specific point: a member's creditor in a multi-member LLC is generally limited to a charging order against distributions, but for a single-member LLC a court can order the interest sold.

How the IRS will tax it, and the deadline that sneaks up

The IRS has no "LLC" return. By default a single-member LLC reports on Schedule C and a multi-member LLC files a partnership return. Either way the profit carries self-employment tax at 15.3% on 92.35% of net earnings and qualifies for the 20% qualified business income deduction, now permanent.

The main alternative is an S-corporation election on Form 2553: you pay yourself a reasonable salary and take the rest as distributions free of self-employment tax. Per the Form 2553 instructions, the election is due no more than two months and 15 days after the start of the tax year it covers. For a new LLC that year begins when it first had owners, assets, or business activity, usually the effective date. Miss it and Rev. Proc. 2013-30 allows a late election for up to three years and 75 days with reasonable cause.

Our rule of thumb: for a single-owner service business with net profit under about $60,000, the election is not worth the payroll cost and the extra return; above roughly $80,000 it usually is. A C-corporation election is rarely right for an owner-operated company, because Florida imposes its 5.5% corporate income tax on LLCs taxed as C-corps, on top of the federal 21%. The full comparison is in LLC vs. S-corp: how the taxes actually differ.

Your first 90 days: the checklist in order

The Sunbiz filing creates the entity; it does not tell the Department of Revenue, the county, or the city that you exist.

1. Days 1 to 7. Sunbiz filing ($125), EIN, operating agreement, business bank account. Add a $50 fictitious name registration if you will trade under a different name.
2. Days 1 to 30. Decide on the S-corp election and file Form 2553 if it fits.
3. Before the first sale. If you sell taxable goods or any of Florida's taxable services, register with the Florida Department of Revenue on Form DR-1. The rate is 6% plus the county surtax, 7.5% combined in Hillsborough County; returns are due on the first and late after the 20th.
4. Before you open. Get the local business tax receipt: Hillsborough County requires one, and inside Tampa city limits the city requires its own as well. Many county categories cost $30 a year. Receipts expire September 30; late renewals carry a 10% penalty plus 5% per month, capped at 25%.
5. Before the first paycheck. Register for reemployment tax once you pay $1,500 of wages in a quarter or have an employee in any 20 weeks of the year; new employers pay 2.7% on the first $7,000 per employee. Report each new employee, and each contractor you expect to pay $600 or more, to Florida's New Hire Reporting Center within 20 days.
6. Nothing for FinCEN. Since August 14, 2026, U.S.-formed companies are permanently exempt from beneficial ownership reporting; see our BOI update.

The Annual Report: $138.75 on time, $538.75 late

Every Florida LLC files an Annual Report with Sunbiz between January 1 and May 1, starting the year after the Articles became effective. It is not a financial statement, just a confirmation of the addresses, agent, and managers on file, and the fee is $138.75. Miss May 1 and the state adds a $400 late fee with no extensions; miss the third Friday in September and the LLC is administratively dissolved, and reinstatement costs $100 plus every missed year's fee. The only reminder is an email to the address on file; the official-looking mailers offering to file it for a fee are not from the state.

The county also taxes business equipment. File the initial tangible personal property return (HC-405 in Hillsborough County) by April 1 of the year after you open; that first filing unlocks the $25,000 exemption, and if assessed value stays under $25,000 the return is waived in later years.

Worked example: a Tampa consultant's first year

Sofia leaves a marketing agency and forms Palm River Marketing, LLC, effective February 10, 2026. She is the only member, expects $140,000 of net profit in a full year, and works from a home office inside Tampa city limits.

In week one she pays Sunbiz $125, lists a commercial registered agent, gets her EIN, signs an operating agreement, and opens a business checking account. Consulting is not on Florida's short list of taxable services (see is sales tax charged on services?), so she has no sales tax account, and with no employees the payroll registrations wait.

Her window for a 2026 S-corp election closes April 25, 2026, and at her profit level it is clearly worth it. As a disregarded LLC her self-employment tax would be about $19,780 ($140,000 × 92.35% × 15.3%). As an S-corp paying herself an $80,000 salary, the Social Security and Medicare taxes on that salary total $12,240 counting both halves. That is roughly $7,500 a year before the cost of payroll, the S-corp return, and a modest reduction in her QBI deduction. She files Form 2553 in March.

She gets the county and city business tax receipts in March. Her first Annual Report is due January 1 to May 1, 2027 ($138.75) and her first tangible personal property return by April 1, 2027; her laptop and desk are worth far less than $25,000, but the initial filing earns the exemption. She never files a federal BOI report.

What usually goes wrong

The mistakes we clean up most often have little to do with the filing: owners miss the Form 2553 window and lose a year of savings. They use a personal account "for now" and hand us twelve months of commingled transactions. They move and forget the registered agent address, so a lawsuit is served at the old house. And they treat the LLC as a tax strategy, when by itself it changes nothing about the tax you owe. The rest of the Florida picture is in Florida business taxes: what you owe even with no state income tax.

When to get help

You can file the Articles yourself, and we would rather you spend money on the decisions than on the form. Where a CPA earns the fee is the tax classification, the salary plan that follows, and getting the state and local registrations done once, correctly, and on time. Our business tax planning and preparation service covers exactly that for new and growing Florida companies.

If you formed the LLC recently and are not sure whether the 2553 window has closed, or you are still choosing an entity, request a 20-minute fit call and bring the Sunbiz confirmation. Twenty minutes now is cheaper than a late-election letter next spring.

Jenny Gao, CPA, EA

Founder of Balance Partners. Florida-licensed CPA and IRS Enrolled Agent with more than a decade of accounting and tax experience. Jenny writes and reviews every guide on this site. About Jenny

This article is general educational information for U.S. business owners and is not accounting, tax, legal, payroll or financial advice for your situation. Rules change and vary by entity, state and facts. Balance Partners, LLC does not provide audit, review or other attest services. Last reviewed September 14, 2026.