Best LLC Formation Services in Virginia

Virginia keeps member and manager names off the Articles of Organization. The form asks for an organizer and an agent instead. Let your registered agent sign as organizer and your name never reaches the record. Read that narrowly. The record is not empty. It holds your agent, which is why the agent you pick matters for the life of the company.

Virginia is also a protected series state. Article 16 of the state LLC Act lets one company hold separate series. Each series keeps its own assets behind its own shield. A landlord uses it to stop four buildings from taking each other down. Each series costs $100 to file, the same as the LLC itself. Then the annual fee statute assesses every protected series separately, so each one owes its own $50 a year too. Four buildings in four series is $400 to file and $250 a year across the parent and its series. The math only works across several assets, and it does not stop after year one.

The name you want costs $10 to hold. It lasts 120 days. You can renew it for another 120 in the 45 days before it lapses. Still writing the plan? That is four months of certainty for the price of lunch.

There is no franchise tax here. A plain Virginia LLC pays $100 once, then $50 a year. The bill does not move with what you earn. Our Virginia LLC guide walks the filing itself step by step.

1. Get your EIN from the IRS. It is free and it is instant. You need it for a bank account, for staff, and for taxes. Apply at IRS.gov and pay nothing.
2. Pay the $50 annual registration fee. It is due on the last day of your anniversary month. Virginia does not call it an annual report. It is a flat fee to the Commission and it does not scale with what you earn. That same section lets the Commission take two or three years up front, online. Look for the option when you pay. It also lets the Commission move your due date by one to eleven months, at your agent's request or to spread its own workload. So pay from the notice the Commission sends, not from the anniversary in your head.
3. Skip the BOI report. FinCEN exempted every company formed in the United States in March 2025. A final rule made that permanent on 14 August 2026. A domestic Virginia LLC files nothing. Only companies formed abroad still report. A letter demanding a fee to file one is a scam, and FinCEN says so.
4. Check your county or city. Virginia has no general state business license. But many localities license businesses themselves and tax gross receipts. Fairfax, Arlington and Richmond all do. Rates and thresholds vary by place.
5. Draft an operating agreement. Virginia does not require one. Banks ask for it anyway when you open an account. It is also what a court reads if your liability shield is challenged.
6. Register for state taxes if they apply. Sell physical goods and you need a sales tax permit. Hire anyone and you register with the Virginia Employment Commission. Neither happens by itself.

• Missing the $50 ends the company - The fee falls due on the last day of your anniversary month. Late adds $25. Three months on, your LLC is canceled automatically, and the statute says that happens whether or not the Commission mailed you notice.
• Coming back costs more than starting did - Reinstatement is $100. On top of that you owe every fee and penalty you would have paid had you never lapsed. You get five years to ask. Lose the name to somebody else meanwhile and you file articles of amendment at $25.
• An agent who resigns starts a second clock - Unpaid fees are not the only way to lose the company. When your registered agent files a statement of resignation, you must name a replacement. You get 31 days. Miss it and the Commission mails a cancellation notice, then the same section ends your existence on the last day of the second month after that notice went out.
• Every change to the Articles is $25 - The name, the purpose, anything printed on them. Each edit is its own filing. And its own fee.
• A protected series costs $100 to open and $50 every year after - Each designation is its own $100 filing, the same price as the LLC. And the annual fee statute assesses every series separately, so each one keeps billing $50 a year for as long as it exists. People plan for the $100. Few plan for the rest.