California statement of information

The Statement of Information fee is $20, paid to the Secretary of State, if the instruction sheet you open still says $20. The late penalty is $250.

The late penalty is much larger than the filing fee. That is why the statement of information is a date-sensitive filing even though the form is short. A missed window turns a $20 filing into a $270 problem, and the state still expects the form.

Read the instruction sheet before you pay. The official LLC-12 instructions are linked in the first paragraph of this page. If the sheet says a different amount, the sheet wins and this page needs an update.

A payment that fails is not a filing. If the state site rejects the card, the statement is not submitted, even if the form was complete on screen. Go back and finish the payment step, then keep the confirmation.

File Form LLC-12 within 90 days of registration, then every two years during the registration month and the five months before it. The initial filing and the recurring filing use the same form, but they are triggered by different clocks.

For a new LLC, the 90-day clock starts at registration. Do not wait for a registration-month window that has already passed. The initial statement is due sooner, and missing it can trigger the same late penalty.

For an existing LLC, the window opens five months before the registration month and closes at the end of the registration month. Put the whole window on your calendar, not just the last day. Filing early in the window leaves room to correct a rejected payment or a stale address.

The initial filing and the recurring filing are easy to confuse because they use the same form. Write the two dates down separately. A new LLC that waits for the recurring window can miss the 90-day deadline while believing it is early.

The phrase registration month and the five months before it means six calendar months in total. If the registration month is June, the window runs from January through June. The exact dates come from the state system, not from this page, so confirm the opening and closing date on bizfile.

A reminder email from this site uses the date stored with your order. That date should be the state date, not a date you invent. If you are unsure, use the start of the window so the 30-day reminder arrives with time to act.

The state can change its online process. From August 1, 2026, online filing needs web user access, according to the official page we read. Create or confirm that access before the window closes, not after.

A window that runs six months is not a reason to wait five of them. The last week of the window is when a login problem or a changed address does the most damage. File in the first half of the window and the remaining months become a buffer instead of a risk.

File at bizfile, the Secretary of State online system. This site does not submit the form and does not hold credentials for your state account. You sign in with your own access and complete the filing yourself.

The August 1, 2026 change means a user account is part of the process, not an optional extra. If you have not used bizfile before, set up access early. A login problem on the last day of the window is avoidable.

Keep the state confirmation after you file. A PDF checklist is not a filing receipt, and a reminder email is not a filing receipt. Only the state can confirm acceptance.

Set up the account with an email you will still control next year and the year after. A work address that disappears when a job changes can lock you out of a filing system that expects the same identity at the next cycle.

The statement of information is short, which makes it easy to treat as a formality. The penalty is not short. Treat the $250 late charge as the real cost of the filing and the six-month window as the time you have to avoid it.

This page does not state the separate Franchise Tax Board annual tax. That figure was not taken from an FTB page. Confirm it on the Franchise Tax Board site. We do not file and we do not pay the state for you.

Do not treat the $20 statement fee as the whole California cost of owning an LLC. The statement is one filing with one agency. The FTB bill is a separate obligation, and this site does not blend the two into a single number.

If you need the FTB amount, open the FTB page and read it there. If you want a checklist for the statement of information, this site sells one. The two tasks are related but not the same.

Leaving a number out is deliberate. A guessed tax figure is worse than a missing one, because an owner may budget for the guess and then be surprised by the real bill. The link to the correct agency is more useful than a number we cannot source.

The same rule applies to the statement fee if the instruction sheet changes it. We print the $20 we read, and we tell you to check the sheet. If the sheet and this page disagree, the sheet wins and we correct the page.

The California PDF lists Form LLC-12, the $20 fee, the $250 late penalty, the initial 90-day filing, the two-year cycle, the six-month window, and the bizfile access note. It also states that the Franchise Tax Board bill is separate and is not printed in the PDF.

The PDF repeats the boundary line that you file on the state site and pay the state yourself. It is a working sheet, not a government form and not a substitute for the instructions.

The yearly plan follows the California date stored with the order and sends three reminders before it. The one-time plan delivers the PDF only.

We do not file the statement, pay the $20 fee, pay the $250 penalty, or calculate the Franchise Tax Board bill. We are not a law firm; a registered agent; a Secretary of State; a tax preparer.

We publish the facts we can tie to an official page and print the date we read it. Where a number belongs to another agency and we have no source for it, we say so instead of filling the gap.