The following information is provided for educational purposes only and in no way constitutes
legal, tax or financial advice.
For legal, tax or financial advice specific to your business needs, we encourage you to
consult with a licensed attorney and/or CPA in your state.
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Before beginning this Lesson, please make sure that you have your stamped and approved
Articles of Organization back from the State.
Otherwise, you will not have the information you need to prepare the next document.
As we discussed in Lesson 2, California has a number of additional requirements for your
LLC to remain in compliance with the State.
The first of these requirements is called the Statement of Information.
The purpose of the Statement of Information is to keep the State updated with your LLC's
contact information.
It includes your LLC Name, your Secretary of State File Number, the LLC's Address, the
Names and Addresses of the Member or Members, your Registered Agent information, as well
as a brief description of your business.
You can find your Secretary of State File Number on your stamped and approved Articles
of Organization that you received back from the State.
You will need to file your first Statement of Information within 90 days of the approval
of your LLC.
Then you will need to file it again every two years.
It will be due by the anniversary date of the approval of your LLC.
The anniversary date is the date the Articles of Organization was stamped and approved by
the State.
The fee for filing your initial Statement of Information is just $20.
In two years, when you file again, the cost will remain the same at $20.
Failure to file on time, whether it's the initial or the ongoing Statements of Information,
will result in the State charging a late fee of $250, and they may eventually dissolve
or shut down your LLC.
Here are some examples of deadlines.
Let's say the Approval Date of your LLC was February 15th in 2015.
Your initial or the first Statement of Information would be due by May 16th of the same year.
That's within 90 days of the Approval Date.
Then your next Statement of Information is going to be due February 15th of the year
2017.
This is two years after the Approval Date.
Then your ongoing Statements of Information will be due every two years by the February
15th deadline.
Let's look at one more example because I know hearing this all at once right away can sometimes
be a little bit confusing.
So let's look at Example 2.
Let's say the Approval Date of your LLC was October 1st in 2015, and you may be watching
these videos in the future so these dates are just arbitrary just to help paint an example
to make it a little bit more clear.
Again, if the Approval Date of your LLC is October 1st, 2015, your initial Statement
of Information is going to be due before December 30th of 2015.
Again, this is 90 days from October 1st (the Approval Date).
Then, your next Statement of Information will be due by October 1st, 2017.
This is the full two years after the original Approval Date.
Then, your ongoing Statements of Information will be due every two years by the October
1st deadline.
Once you determine when your initial and your ongoing Statements of Information are due,
you should not take any chance that your filings are delayed.
You should file your initial Statement of Information as well as your ongoing Statements
of Information as early as possible to make sure the State receives them before their
due date.
The State allows you to file your Statements of Information up to three months before they
are actually due, so we recommend that you take advantage of this.
Although the State will send your LLC a reminder for ongoing Statements of Information, it's
a good idea to calendar the due dates on your own.
And just a note here: they do not send you a reminder for the initial Statement Information.
That's due within 90 days of the approval, and it's your responsibility to send that.
The reminders that you receive after that are going to be for the ongoing Statements
of Information (again, which are due every two years).
Even if you don't receive a reminder, you are still responsible (for filing) to file
your Statement of Information every two years.
Once your Statement of Information is completed, you will need to submit it to the State along
with the filing fee.
You will find the accepted forms of payment and the address where to send your Statement
of Information to below this video.
It's a good idea to make a copy of the Statement of Information that you send to the State
and keep it with your business records.
We are now ready to fill out your Statement of Information.
You can download this document below the video.
Let's get started.
Here we are inside the Statement of Information.
This is a three-page PDF document.
The first and second pages do have instructions, and the third page is the actual Statement
of Information.
Feel free to read through pages one and two, but we've already discussed all the details
within this video.
This form can be filled out on the computer, or it can be printed out and then filled out
by hand.
If you fill it out by hand, please make sure to use blue or black ink.
Make sure that you print the documents on letter size (that's your standard eight and
a half by 11 inches).
Also, please note that I have a professional version of Adobe Acrobat.
You may just have a simple free version called Adobe Reader and you may not have as much
functionality in order to type inside the document.
If that's the case, no worries; again you can just print it out, and fill it out by
hand.
Another important thing to make note of, is at the bottom of page two; on the instructions,
they do list the address where to send the Statement of Information to.
The only thing is that you may be watching this video in the future, so we ask you to
cross-reference the address that you find within your documentation, or that you're
watching this video, and just reference the address that we have listed below this video.
That's the most up-to-date and accurate address.
Alright, let's get started.
In order to save time, I've already filled out the information within this document.
Under Section 1, you're going to list the Name of your LLC, and remember to include
the full name with the abbreviation LLC or L.L.C.
Under No. 2, you're going to list your Secretary of State File Number (I just included a bunch
of exes because i don't have an actual File Number for California.
No. 3 you're going to leave blank (this is only for LLCs that are formed outside of the
State of California).
Under No. 4, for your initial Statement of Information, you're going to leave this box
unchecked.
Now, moving forward, in your ongoing Statements of Information, you're going to be using the
same PDF document.
However, if you haven't had any changes to the address or any information for your LLC,
all you have to do is simply check this off.
You can skip Nos. 5 all the way down through 14 (basically a 5 through 14) and then on
15, you just date, print, put your title and sign.
For now, because this is your initial Statement of Information, again you're going to leave
No. 4 unchecked.
In No. 5, I'm going to list the Address and the Principal Office of the business.
In No. 6, I'm going to leave it blank because the Mailing Address is the same as the Street
Address.
Now this is a little confusing because No. 7 says the street address of the California
office, so this one has to be within the State of California.
Most likely both of these addresses will be the same for you; in my case for this example
they're the same so I just fill them in twice.
Scrolling down to No. 8 where it says "Name and Complete Address of the Chief Executive
Officer, If Any", this typically would just apply to Corporations so you can leave this
blank.
In No. 9, 10 and 11, you're going to list the Names and Addresses of the LLC's Member,
or Members.
In this case, this is a Single-member LLC (I've just listed my name and my address).
Heading down, under Section 12 and 13, this is where we're going to list the Registered
Office and the Registered Agent.
In this case, I am the Registered Agent for my LLC, so I'm going to include my name and
my address again.
Remember, your LLC's Registered Agent could be a friend or family member that lives in
the State; or, if you've hired a Commercial Registered Agent, you'll simply just list
the name of that company here and their address on No. 13.
Under No. 14, they're asking for a brief description of the type of business.
Now this doesn't have to be an elaborate sentence; it can just be a few simple words, such as
this example: plastics manufacturing and shipping.
Other examples could say landscaping services, marketing consulting, etcetera.
Then at No. 15, you're going to list the date, and you're going to print your name.
Under "Title", you can put "Managing Member"; afterwards, once you print out the document,
you'll simply sign here where it says "Signature", take your payment of $20, and you're going
to send that to the State.
Again, the accepted forms of payment and the address where to send this document to are
listed below the video.
So let's go over some important points which we mentioned earlier in the video: that this
initial Statement of Information is going to be due within 90 days of the approval of
your LLC, and then it will be due again within two years of the Approval Date.
Again, it's basically a way for the State to make money (and most importantly they keep
your contact information up-to-date); and if businesses don't file the Statement of
Information, it helps the State keep the records clean because they eventually dissolve and
shut down businesses.
So you'll have to come back to this lesson, and in approximately a little bit less than
two years, you're going to download this document again and just make changes to any information
that's updated.
If there's no changes to any of the Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, all the way down to 14,
it's really simple: all you do is put the Name of the LLC, your Secretary of State File
Number, you check off No. 4 that says there's been no changes, go down to No. 15, fill in
the date, your name, your title and sign.
Let's just do one quick walk-through again before we wrap this up: again, No. 1, Name
of the LLC; No. 2, Secretary of State File Number; No. 4, for the initial Statement of
Information, you leave it unchecked; for the ongoing Statements of Information, you check
it off if there have been no changes, or you leave it unchecked, and then you go ahead
and just update your address below; No. 5, you're going to list the street address (or
in this case this is the principal office address) of the LLC, and you're going to list
it again in No. 7, the address of the California office.
If your LLC is out-of-state, in No. 7, you can list the street address.
Down here, in No. 13, the address of the Registered Agent, you can put that up here for your California
address if you don't have an address in the State (hopefully that makes sense).
No. 8, you can skip over.
No. 9, you're going to list the Names and Addresses of the Member or the Members of
the LLC.
No. 12, you'll list the name of the Registered Agent.
No. 13, you're going to list the address of the Registered Agent.
14, a brief description; and 15, you date, print your name, your title, and then you
print out this form and sign the document.
Alright, and that completes this Lesson.