Florida LLC for Non-Residents
Published 3 September 2026 · Reviewed by Ashfaq Khattak, US Tax Consultant
Florida has no personal income tax and is genuinely convenient if you have a real presence there — but it puts every member’s name and address on a public, free, fully searchable website, and it charges a $400 late fee for the annual report that cannot be waived. Those two facts decide Florida for most non-residents, in both directions.
If privacy matters to you, form in Wyoming or New Mexico instead. If you have Florida customers, staff, inventory or property, Florida is where you belong and the disclosure is the price of it.
The public record, in detail
Florida’s annual report requires the names and addresses of all members or managers, and that information becomes part of the public record on Sunbiz — the Division of Corporations’ own search, free to use, no account needed, indexed by search engines.
This is not a technicality. It means:
- Anybody who knows your company name can find your name and the address you gave.
- Data brokers scrape Sunbiz, so the record spreads beyond the state’s own site.
- Using a home address makes your home address public. Use a business address you are content to publish.
Compare Wyoming and New Mexico, where the state never asks who the members are. If you have already formed in Florida and this is a problem, the fix is a different formation state, not an amendment.
The annual report and the $400 that follows
Three dates, and they are unforgiving:
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 January – 1 May | The window to file the annual report at the ordinary fee. Online only — Florida does not accept an LLC annual report by post, fax or in person. |
| After 1 May | A $400 late fee is added automatically. There is no provision to waive or abate it: not for a first offence, not for illness, not for having forgotten. |
| Fourth Friday of September | A company that still has not filed is administratively dissolved. Reinstatement costs more than the report ever would have. |
The Florida Department of State issues a public reminder before the deadline every year, and the fee schedule is on Sunbiz. We checked both on 3 September 2026. A $400 penalty on a report that takes ten minutes is the single most avoidable cost in US compliance, and it is the one we see most.
When Florida is the right choice
- You have a real Florida presence. Staff, an office, warehoused inventory, property, or you are physically there. Then Florida is not optional — a Wyoming LLC operating in Florida has to register in Florida as well, and you pay both.
- Your market is Latin America. Miami is a genuine hub for it, and the banking and professional services around that are real, not marketing.
- You are relocating. No personal state income tax matters a great deal once you actually live there, and not at all while you do not.
And when it is not: if your only connection to the United States is the paperwork, you are paying Florida’s disclosure and its penalty regime for a benefit — no personal income tax — that you cannot use as a non-resident, since you were not paying another state’s income tax either.
What we do
- Name check against Sunbiz.
- Articles of Organization filed with the Division of Corporations.
- Florida registered agent for the first year, with a physical in-state address.
- Advice on which address to publish, before it is published, because this is the decision people regret.
- EIN application to the IRS, no SSN required.
- Operating agreement and your BOI report with FinCEN.
- The 1 May deadline tracked for you, with reminders in good time. This is the whole point of having someone do it.
What your state choice does not change
These are federal and they follow the company wherever it is formed:
- Your EIN. Every LLC needs one to open a bank account, and with no SSN it is a fax or mail application to the IRS rather than the instant online one.
- Form 5472. A foreign-owned single-member LLC files it with a pro-forma Form 1120 every year, at a penalty of $25,000 for missing it, whether or not the company earned anything.
- Your BOI report. Filed with FinCEN, not with the state. Choosing an anonymous state does not make you anonymous to the federal government.
Anyone selling you a state on the basis that it removes one of these is selling you a $25,000 problem.
Frequently asked questions
Are Florida LLC members public?
Yes. The Florida annual report requires the names and addresses of all members or managers, and that becomes part of the public record on Sunbiz — free to search, no account needed, and scraped by data brokers. If privacy matters, form in Wyoming or New Mexico instead.
When is the Florida LLC annual report due?
By 1 May each year, filed online only — Florida does not accept it by post, fax or in person. After 1 May a $400 late fee is added automatically, and there is no provision to waive or abate it for any reason.
What happens if I never file the Florida annual report?
A company that has not filed by the fourth Friday of September is administratively dissolved. Reinstating it costs considerably more than the report would have, and in the meantime the liability protection you formed the company for is in question.
Should a non-resident with no Florida presence form there?
Usually not. You take on public disclosure of your name and address and a strict penalty regime in exchange for no personal state income tax — a benefit a non-resident was not paying anyway.
Official sources
Rules, forms and fees on this page come from the following official sources, each checked on 2026-09-03. Government fees and deadlines change; confirm the current figure on the agency's own page before you file.