Home › Biennial Statement
Nine dollars
The New York Biennial Statement
The cheapest compliance obligation in New York, and the one most often missed. Nine dollars, once every two years, and the state does not chase you for it.
The filing
What is a Biennial Statement?
A short filing that confirms the address where the Department of State should forward service of process, plus the chief executive officer for corporations. It costs $9 and is due every two years.
It is not an annual report. New York does not have one. Plenty of formation sites will tell you otherwise because most states do.
The form asks for very little. The service of process address, the principal executive office for a corporation, and the name and address of the chief executive officer if you are a corporation. An LLC's version is shorter still.
Both LLCs and business corporations file it. Same $9, same schedule.
In the calendar month your company was originally formed or authorized, every second year. A company formed in March files every second March.
You get the whole month. There is no specific day.
The state may send a notice to the address on file, and that notice may not reach you. The obligation does not depend on receiving it, which is the trap.
Filing is online through the Department of State's biennial statement system, and the whole thing takes a few minutes with a card.
Consequences
What happens if you miss it?
Your company is marked past due on the public record. New York charges no late penalty, but the delinquency is visible to anyone searching and can block a good standing certificate.
No fine. No dissolution. Compared with most states this is mild.
The damage is reputational and procedural. A lender pulls your record and sees past due. A buyer's lawyer does the same during diligence. You need a Certificate of Status for a licence or a bank and cannot get a clean one until the statement is filed.
The fix is the filing itself. Nine dollars, a few minutes, and the record clears.
A past due company is easier to sue quietly. A stale service of process address on an old Biennial Statement is exactly how a default judgment happens. See service of process in New York.
While you are in there
The address field worth reading twice
The Biennial Statement's main job is confirming where the Department of State forwards anything served on it. For most New York companies that is the only address the state has.
If it is an apartment you left in 2021, the next lawsuit goes there.
Two ways to fix it. Update the address on the Biennial Statement itself, which is the cheap route at $9 during your filing month. Or file a Certificate of Change for $30 at any time, which also lets you name an agent.
Our reminder emails cover this deadline, and updating the address is part of what the $49 service exists to make unnecessary.
New company and not sure what else is coming? The formation sequence lists every deadline in order.
We send the reminder
Two emails a year, included in the $49. One of them is this deadline.