The Corporations Division of the Office of the Georgia Secretary of State, at 2 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Atlanta, forms business corporations, nonprofit and professional corporations, benefit corporations, limited partnerships, limited liability limited partnerships and limited liability companies, and registers the ones formed elsewhere as foreign entities. The business division questions page directs a status check to the eCorp business search, and tells a company that never received its renewal notice to search by name, control number, officer or registered agent and read the status field, where active noncompliance means the entity will be administratively dissolved or revoked that year.
The division works under Chapter 590-7 of the Rules of the Secretary of State as well as Title 14 of the Official Code of Georgia, and the rules say what the record is built from: a transmittal information form that accompanies every articles of incorporation, keyed by staff into the automated database, with the division disclaiming responsibility for errors on the form. For Georgia businesses by place, the Georgia county pages cover all one hundred fifty nine counties.
- Ten dollars, or twenty on paper: a certificate of existence, against the seventy two dollars fifty a 2020 mailer asked new companies to pay.
- January 1 to April 1: the annual registration window for every entity, at fifty dollars for a corporation, LLC or LP and thirty for a nonprofit.
- Twenty five dollars: the penalty for a late registration, with a notice of administrative dissolution and sixty days to answer it.
- Sixteen point Helvetica: the size of the disclaimer a third party registration mailer must carry under the 2021 law.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Georgia's own systems: Chapter 590-7 of the Rules of the Georgia Secretary of State, the rules on corporate annual registration, the rules on certification of documents, the rules on dissolutions, revocations and withdrawals, the rules on limited liability company annual registrations, the rules on filing of documents, the Corporations Division filing fees effective September 6, 2025, the Secretary of State business division questions, the rip off alert on third party annual registration solicitations, the alert on misleading certificate of existence solicitations, the georgia.gov guide to renewing a corporation, the georgia.gov guide to renewing an LLC, the georgia.gov guide to registering a corporation, the georgia.gov business renewal page, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
What the division records about a company, and what it does not
The questions page is unusually direct about the limits of the file. Bylaws are not filed with the Secretary of State and are maintained by the corporation. Shareholders and owners of a corporation are not listed. Of a corporation officers only three are recorded, the chief executive officer, the chief financial officer and the secretary, and one person may hold all three. Georgia law on limited liability companies requires the listing of the registered agent only, so members and managers of an LLC are not on file and there is no procedure to change them by filing.
The division has no telephone numbers for entities, officers or agents, no record of whether a corporation is an S or a C corporation, and no employer identification numbers, which come from the Internal Revenue Service. Directors must be at least eighteen; officers have no minimum age. A Georgia search therefore confirms existence, status, the registered agent and office, the principal office and three officers, and little else about who is behind a company, which is where the Georgia people search guide picks up.
Annual registration between January 1 and April 1
Rule 590-7-4-.03 of the annual registration rules sets the window: each corporation on file files its annual registration between January 1 and April 1 of every year, and the registration is due as of January 1 of any year in which the corporation exists. A newly formed Georgia corporation files its first registration within ninety days of incorporation, or, if the articles were filed after October 1, between January 1 and April 1 of the following year, and a certificate of existence may be issued from the date of incorporation until that ninety day registration falls due.
Under Rule 590-7-22 a new LLC, like a newly qualified foreign corporation, files its first registration in the window of the year after it was formed. Since Rule 590-7-4-.05, a registration may be filed for one, two or three calendar years at once, paid for each year, and the next one falls due in the first year after the period ends; an entity that reinstates owes its next registration in the year after reinstatement. Changes of principal office, officers or registered agent between registrations go on an amended annual registration, and fees are not refunded if the entity dissolves or is revoked before its period ends.
The rules require every active entity to be sent a notice as soon as possible after January 1, by mail or email, except those that let their mailing address lapse, and the division keeps filed registrations for five years.
The fee schedule effective September 6, 2025 prices the registration at fifty dollars for a profit, professional or benefit corporation, an LLC, an LP, an LLLP or a trust estate, thirty dollars for a nonprofit corporation and twenty five for a foreign limited liability partnership, each shown with a ten dollar service charge, which the georgia.gov renewal guide describes as the charge for a registration sent by mail; the Secretary of State put the price at fifty dollars or less when it published its alert.
An amended registration costs twenty dollars, the penalty for late filing twenty five, and a mailed envelope must be postmarked by April 1 to avoid it. A company with nothing to change and no fees owing can use One Click Registration without logging into an eCorp account.
Active noncompliance, the sixty day notice and five years to reinstate
Rule 590-7-4-.10 and its LLC counterpart say that an entity which fails to file its registration with the correct fee may be administratively dissolved or revoked under Title 14, and the questions page says that in most instances this is exactly why a Georgia company is dissolved. The dissolution rules describe the procedure: the Commissioner mails a notice of the grounds by first class mail to the last known principal office or the registered agent, and if the entity does not correct each ground or show that it does not exist within sixty days, a certificate of administrative dissolution citing the grounds is issued, or a certificate of revocation for a foreign entity.
Filing the missing registration within the sixty days, online or on paper with a check, stops it. A dissolved entity continues to exist but may carry on no business except winding up, under Sections 14-2-1421, 14-3-1421 and 14-11-603 of the Code, and may apply for reinstatement within five years for two hundred fifty dollars online or two hundred sixty by mail, after which its existence is restored retroactively for all purposes.
Two consequences fall on the search itself: the name of an entity administratively dissolved within the last five years cannot be reserved by anyone else, and a foreign entity whose certificate of authority has been revoked cannot reinstate at all and must requalify with a new application. An entity must also be current on every registration before it can dissolve or withdraw voluntarily, and one that dissolves between January 1 and April 1 still owes that year.
Certificates of existence, and the six other certificates
Rule 590-7-6-.05 lists what the division will certify. A Certificate of Existence is generated from the automated database for an active corporation in good standing and in compliance with the filing and annual registration provisions; a Certificate of Search states that an entity is not found of record; a Certificate of Noncompliance is issued for an entity on file that is not in good standing; a Certificate of Registered Agent and Registered Office gives the agent and office of record; certified copies cover any document on the database or microfilm; and a Certificate of Fact is prepared on a written request for a specific fact after research of the records.
A Certificate of Corporate History, the long form, is priced by the research time needed. On the fee schedule a certificate of existence costs ten dollars online or twenty on paper, the search, noncompliance and registered agent certificates ten dollars each, a certified copy ten dollars for a document under twenty five pages and ten cents a page beyond that, an entity history or certificate of fact fifty dollars, of which forty is research, and a raised seal blue ink certificate twenty five dollars on top.
Expedited certificates cost sixty dollars for two business day service or two hundred seventy five for the same day. For a foreign corporation, the rules note that only four documents are held in Georgia, the application and certificate of authority, the home state certificate of existence and the Georgia annual registration, and everything else must be ordered from the home state.
Trade names at the clerk of superior court
A Georgia trade name, DBA or fictitious name is not a state record. Under Section 10-1-490 of the Official Code, it is registered with the clerk of superior court of the county in which the business is chiefly carried on, or, for a domestic corporation, the county of its legal domicile, and the questions page says so in answer to the direct question. A name search at the Secretary of State therefore finds only entity names, and the division adds that issuance of a name means only that it is distinguishable on its records, not that the holder has an exclusive right to use it in the marketplace.
A name reservation costs thirty five dollars, lasts thirty days, and is answered within five to seven business days; the division will not confirm availability by telephone. The Georgia court records guide covers the superior court clerks where the trade name registers sit.
Processing times, expedite fees and the identity check
Online filings are generally processed within seven to ten business days and paper filings within fifteen, with longer waits from late December through January and at the end of each quarter. The fee schedule sells speed on filings at one hundred twenty dollars for two business days, two hundred seventy five for the same day on a document received by noon, and one thousand two hundred for one hour service between nine and four, and the georgia.gov registration guide gives the same tiers as one hundred, two hundred fifty and one thousand dollars on top of the fee.
A foreign entity registering to do business pays two hundred twenty five dollars, or two hundred for a foreign LLP, must attach a home state certificate of existence no older than ninety days, and owes a five hundred dollar penalty if it transacted business in Georgia for more than thirty days first. Since the division adopted identity proofing, certain online filers are routed to Experian to answer five questions drawn from their credit file before payment, a step the Secretary of State says leaves no inquiry on the credit report. Fees are nonrefundable and nontransferable, and no cash is accepted.
The two alerts and the sixteen point disclaimer
On December 1, 2022 the Secretary of State published a rip off alert about out of state mailers that made an annual registration look required through them and charged around one hundred seventy dollars for a filing that costs fifty or less with one click. It cited House Bill 153, passed in March 2021, which requires any mailing soliciting a Georgia business to renew through a third party to carry, in sixteen point Helvetica at the top and two inches from any other text, the words THIS IS A SOLICITATION.
THIS IS NOT A BILL OR OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT AND HAS NOT BEEN SENT BY THE GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE'S OFFICE. On January 24, 2020 a new business owner alert described letters to newly formed companies asking seventy two dollars fifty for a certificate of existence, worded to imply the certificate was a necessary step in forming the business; the office answered that no new Georgia company needs one to complete registration and that it sells the certificate for ten dollars online or twenty on paper.
Both alerts give the division line, 844-753-7825, for anyone unsure whether a letter is real.
Questions about looking up a Georgia business
Related Georgia records
The other Georgia guides on this site are the Georgia public records law guide for the Open Records Act, the Georgia court records guide for the superior and state courts, the Georgia background check guide for the Georgia Crime Information Center, and the Georgia county pages for every county office.