how to look up an llc in illinois [Must-Know Tips]

Last updated : Sept 26, 2022

Write a comment

how to form an LLC in Illinois if you are interested in starting an LLC in the Land of Lincoln you have good reason Illinois has a 5th largest economy in the country with great access to venture capital every state has slightly different requirements performing an LLC follow along closely to learn the required steps for creating your own limited liability company in the state of Illinois there are two ways to form an LLC in Illinois you can form one yourself or you can hire a service to do it for you let's start by looking at the five basic requirements to form an LLC in Illinois on your own you can also find these steps in more detail on our website linked in the description below one name your LLC every state has its own rules about what kind of names are allowed for LLC's in general you will need to observe these naming guidelines your name must include the phrase limited liability company or one of its abbreviations LLC or LLC with a period following H letter restricted words such as Bank Attorney law office etc may require additional paperwork and may also need a licensed professional to be part of the LLC your name cannot include words that could confuse your LLC with the government agency such as FBI Treasury State Department etc you cannot use a name that has already been registered to see if your name is available in your state you will need to do a name search this free service is available on your state's Secretary of State website check out our free guide for finding the direct link to your state we also recommend that you check to see if your business name is available as a web domain even if you don't plan to make a business website today you may want to buy the URL in order to prevent others from requiring it to choose a registered agent Illinois requires that you nominate a registered agent for your LLC who is your business's point of contact with the state the registered agent can be an individual within the company including yourself or you can hire a professional service authorized to do business in Illinois they will send and receive legal papers on your behalf these documents include official correspondence like legal summons and document filings which your registered agent will receive and forward to you your registered agent will help remind you to file the nest sir reports failure to properly maintain your LLC can result in fines and dissolution so this assistance is valuable 3 file the articles of organization to register your LLC you will need to file the articles of organization with the state of Illinois this can be done online or by mail and will cost one hundred and fifty dollars when filing you will need to state whether your LLC will be member managed or manager managed member managed means all members of the LLC manage the company this is good for small organizations where everyone is involved in day-to-day operations the second option is manager managed where individuals are appointed to manage the LLC this is appropriate for larger organizations where not everyone is involved in the day-to-day affairs of the business for create an operating agreement although not every state requires it you should always create an operating agreement to establish ownership terms and member roles for your LLC this foundational document is the core of your LLC and will help you maintain your organization as well as further establish your LLC is a separate legal entity there are six main sections of an operating agreement organization outlines when and where the company was created who the members are and how the ownership is structured management and voting addresses how the company is managed as well as how the members vote capital contributions covers which members financially support the LLC and how more funds will be raised in the future distributions outlines how the company's profits and losses are shared among members membership changes describes the process for adding or removing members as well as if and when members can transfer their ownership shares and dissolution which explains the circumstances in which the LLC may be dissolved an operating agreement is an internal document it does not need to be filed with the state however it should be updated every time there is a change in membership or management at the company you can download a free sample operating agreement or create a custom one using our free operating agreement tool at how to start an LLC comm 5 obtain an ein lastly you'll need to get an employer identification number or ein from the IRS also known as a federal tax identification number your EIN is like a social security number for your LLC and how the IRS tracks your business for tax purposes an ein is also necessary to open a business banking account and legally hire employees a insr free of charge and can be obtained from the IRS online or through the mail and with that you will have formed an Illinois LLC on your own option to hire professional service the second way to create an Illinois LLC is to hire a professional service to create your LLC for you hiring a professional service to file your forms and act as your registered agent for the LLC will cost you an additional fifty to one hundred and fifty dollars however there are several benefits to working with a pro a hired registered agent helps with getting your reports filed on time helps you stay organized by keeping your business mail separate and is available at all regular business hours to accept official mail and legal papers on your LLC's behalf a final and important additional benefit of using a service is privacy a professional service will provide a level of privacy by withholding your personal name and home address from the LLC's contact information there are many reasons you might not want your personal information easily accessible and associated with your business hiring a professional LLC formation service is an easy way to accomplish this now that you have seen the different requirements and ways you can form an LLC in Illinois visit our site and take some time to research your options and establish a solid foundation for your business activities click on the links in the description below to research the top five professional formation services or get more information on how to form an illinois LLC on your own now you know all the steps to form an LLC in your state for a more detailed guide go to how to start an LLC com you can also create an operating agreement and use our business plan tool free of charge give the video a like if you found it useful and subscribe if you'd like to see more and if you have questions or encounter any roadblocks leave a comment below good luck and starting your small business you

Thanks for your comment Larraine Kilton, have a nice day.
- Tawna Szwed, Staff Member

so today we are talking about how to start an llc in illinois my name is eric and i'm going to give you three methods for starting up your llc the first would be going through your state website which we're going to discuss in detail the second is using online tools to set up your llc and the third is going through an attorney but at the end of this video i'll show you how you can go through an attorney with a free consultation involved so perhaps before you dive off the deep end spending a ton of money with an attorney you can figure out if that's the right fit for your needs also what i'm going to be talking about in this video are important facts on how to make sure that your llc is legit a lot of people overlook these things and if you're not familiar with the terms such as piercing the corporate veil or understanding exactly what a registered agent is and what they do for you then you want to make sure that you watch this entire video to make sure that you're setting up your llc in the proper way so why don't we get started with the state website so here we are on the state website and i've got some good news and bad news for you so some of the good news here is if you look at the state filing fees and we scroll down you'll see that the old filing fee just for your articles of organization was 500 and now it's 150 so the cost of setting up an llc in the state of illinois is actually reduced quite a bit recently so that's great to hear the bad news is i don't think that this website is laid out too great um it's a lot of information and what i have found is other services will walk you through kind of more step-by-step where a state website is just somebody working for the state for the government and they just kind of throw every bit of information at you and then say good luck so what i should mention too is the link here above any link or resource mentioned in this video will be in the description below so if you go to the description anything you could possibly need that was mentioned in this video is going to be mentioned there so what you do is you kind of go through and click file and we're just going to set up a standard llc and then uh this particular junction here i'm just saying yes i kind of meet all these provisions for the llc and then this is where it gets a little bit important here is that if you put in an llc name you want to make sure that it is not taken already so you can see i already have an example here of abc llc what they'll do is they'll search their database here and they'll let you know you know what we've already got these types of llc's with these names here so if the specific one that you're looking for is here then you may want to consider a different name but if it's not you can click i confirm and you can continue through so i just got some dummy information just to get through to the next page and this is where i start to have kind of issues with state websites so in this particular case it's talking about a registered agent registered office it's saying that a limited liability company cannot act as its own registered agent the address of the registered office must be located within the boundaries of illinois and then you know a po box is not acceptable who is your registered agent so i think most people going through this at this point are just going to say you know what it's my friend johnny down the street i'm going to have him be my registered agent he lives in illinois he'll take care of me so the reason why this is an issue is in the case of you being sued by an attorney now the whole reason you set up an llc is to limit your liability and if you're not doing things like this seriously you're not taking this seriously as far as your registered agent you might be opening up yourself to a lot of liability this might be a good point in the video to explain exactly what an llc is and what it is not some people think that an llc is going to create some sort of tax savings for your tax advantage it does not it's simply for limiting your liability what an llc does is you have your business assets and then you have your personal assets your personal assets might be your personal home personal bank account your personal car and the llc creates a division between these two things so what happens is if you are sued an attorney who's suing you is going to try to do something called pierce the corporate veil now that is legal jargon for basically trying to find cracks in your llc to say that your llc is not legit now one of the ways that this kind of happens is if you have issues with your registered agent now if we go to this tool called ink file they explain what a registered agent is so what they do is official letters and correspondence from your secretary of state services of process notices so if you're sued they're going to make sure that you're appearing in court official federal government correspondence information notifications tax forms and requests for payment and request to complete permits company filings or reports so again if you're going through your buddy down the street and he's not sending you these documents not making sure that you're renewing with the state and making sure that you're doing your annual reports you might have a crack in your llc so when you're sued by an attorney they're going to find that crack they're going to be able to pierce the corporate fail and they're going to be able to erase that division between your business and personal assets so what this means is they could potentially come after your personal home your car your personal bank account so that's why it's really important when you're going through these steps is to not just kind of breeze through these types of things and say hey my friend down the street is my registered agent so this particular point in juncture what i'd like to do is talk about why i think that some of the online tools outside of your state website are pretty advantageous probably one of the most popular one is legalzoom the only issue i have with legalzoom is they're kind of the original gangster in this space and that being the case what they can do is they can actually charge you a 79 fee on top of your filing fee so in your particular case the state filing fee is probably going to be around 150 154 but then it's going to be 79 on top of that now the service that i was just showing you is called the ink file i like this service for a couple reasons one of them is their learning center here is super helpful so if you're looking for state filing prices or what we were looking at just a moment ago is about registered agents start a business checklist is great if you're very early on in your business but one of the other things too is they've incorporated over 250 000 businesses since 2004 and your eyeball might have been attracted to this big zero number here so if you launch your business with this service by clicking this button or this button up here what's going to happen is is you'd say i want an llc which you know what 80 of all entities created are llc's so it's a very popular choice and then we go down to illinois it's

Thanks gigitano your participation is very much appreciated
- Tawna Szwed

About the author

Tawna Szwed

I've studied public history at Broward College in Fort Lauderdale and I am an expert in mechanical engineering. I usually feel excited. My previous job was hotel convention/events coordinator I held this position for 11 years, I love talking about ice skating and canoeing. Huge fan of Pablo Picasso I practice parachuting and collect artist trading cards.