Forming a company and hiring: the official numbers

Starting a company and making the first hire both come with figures set by states and federal agencies: filing fees, annual report fees, unemployment tax wage bases, credit reductions. We record each figure with the agency's own source and the date we checked it.

What we record

• State filing, annual report and franchise tax amounts for LLCs and corporations.
• Registered agent service prices, read from each company's own pricing page.
• Payroll tax wage bases and rates set by states and the federal government, with the year each applies to.
• When a figure changes, the old and new amounts and the date of the change.
• The date we checked each figure, and a link to the official source.

How we work

We read state statutes, state agency pages and federal publications from the IRS and the Department of Labor, and record what they say. Payroll providers' blog posts can help us find a source, but they are never our source. When an agency has not published a figure yet, the page says so instead of guessing.

Every page carries the date it was last checked, so you can judge how current it is. Read more about our approach on the about page.