How do I know if a registered agent invoice or state notice is real?
Registered agentComplianceCosts
A real invoice for registered agent service comes from the agent you appointed, at the price you agreed to, and from nobody else. If you did not hire the sender, you owe them nothing, however official the envelope looks. The state does not bill for registered agent service, does not send invoices for annual minutes, and does not sell labor law posters.
How the mailers work
The day your filing appears on the public record, your company name, address, file number and formation date are available to anyone. Within weeks a form arrives that copies the look of a state notice: a seal, a form number, a response date, and a fee somewhere between fifty and a few hundred dollars. The usual versions are an annual minutes compliance form, a certificate of status for a fee, a labor law poster order, a corporate records book, and a registered agent renewal from an agent you have never heard of. Most carry a line in small print saying the sender is not a government agency and the product is not required by law. That line is what keeps them legal, and it is the first thing to look for.
Four checks
- Is the sender the Secretary of State, on a .gov website, or a company with a name chosen to sound like one?
- Did you appoint them? Your formation order and your state filing say who your agent is.
- Is the thing being sold required at all? Corporations keep minutes, but no state makes you file or buy them. Labor law posters are required once you have employees, and the federal ones are free from the Department of Labor.
- Does the fee match the state's own fee schedule, and does the due date match the state's website?
A real state notice is for an annual report, a franchise tax or an agent change, and everything on it matches the state's own site. When in doubt, pay through the state's site, never through the coupon in the envelope.
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Written by the lawyers who built Arabella. This is legal information, not legal advice for your situation, and reading it does not make us your lawyers. For a real dispute or a high-stakes decision, talk to a licensed attorney. More questions.