How to file a Delaware foreign LLC registration yourself

• The LLC's exact name and its home state and formation date.
• The name you will register under, if it differs from the home name.
• One sentence describing what the LLC will do in Delaware.
• A Delaware registered agent who has agreed to serve, with a street address.
• The day Delaware work begins, or began.
• A certificate of existence from the LLC's own state, no more than 6 months old when Delaware files.
• Someone who can sign for the LLC.

The form is six articles and a signature.

A mailed request goes to the Division of Corporations at 401 Federal Street, Suite 4, in Dover (Division of Corporations, John G. Townsend Building, 401 Federal Street, Suite 4, Dover, DE 19901). The Division asks for a cover sheet that gives your name or the entity's name, a return address and a phone number. The check is made out to the Delaware Secretary of State. The Division returns every order by regular mail unless you include a FedEx or UPS account number on the request, and it cannot return anything by fax or email. Because of the six-month rule on the certificate, mailing time counts against you.

The filing service sits behind the Division's eCorp site and asks you to register an account first. The form page explains each article, and the cover letter on the form lists what the Division wants alongside it.

The usual snags are not on the Delaware form. The certificate comes from a different office, with its own wait, and its date starts a six-month clock. The agent has to be willing and has to have a Delaware street address, and the state asks you to speak to the agent before naming them. The purpose line can be too vague. And the registration is not the end of the work, since the tax comes round every June 1 and the Division mails the statement to the agent, not to you. Ask your agent to forward it.

Delaware charges $200 no matter who sends the paperwork. A certified copy of the stamped application is $50. If you want to verify the LLC's status online later, the Division charges $10. What you save by filing yourself is our charge, and what you give up is the checking: we check the application against the certificate before it goes. The cost page has every figure in one place.

A plain case suits doing it yourself: the home-state record is clean, you already have an agent who has said yes, the purpose fits in one sentence, and nothing is urgent. A messier case benefits from help: the home state is slow with certificates, you need a Delaware agent and have none, the LLC has been working here for a while, or you want the filing checked before anything is sent. Either way the state fee is the same, and the tax afterwards is yours to pay.