How to Form an LLC in Arizona (6 Easy Steps)

Arizona LLC Law · Updated 2026

How to Form an LLC in Arizona in 2026: The 6 Steps, Explained

By Richard Keyt, an Arizona LLC attorney who has formed more than 10,000 Arizona limited liability companies since 1979. Questions about forming or running an Arizona LLC are free — call 480-664-7478 or book a free phone, office or Zoom meeting on Rick's online calendar.

1 Choose a Name and Confirm It Is Available

Naming the company is frequently the slowest part of the process, and it involves two entirely different questions that people tend to collapse into one. Availability at the Arizona Corporation Commission is not the same thing as the right to use the name.

First: make sure the name does not infringe someone's trademark

The Corporation Commission will happily approve a name that infringes a federally registered trademark. Its database only checks whether another Arizona entity is already using something confusingly similar — it knows nothing about trademark law. So before you get attached to a name, search it and its close variations in the searchable database of the United States Patent & Trademark Office.

Ideally your name will (i) be capable of strong federal trademark protection, (ii) be easy for customers to remember, (iii) tell people what you sell, and (iv) leave a matching .com available. Note that goals (i) and (iii) fight each other. Almost every client wants a name that describes the business, but trademark law gives merely descriptive marks the weakest protection. "Rick's Bar & Grill" tells you exactly what it is and is nearly impossible to protect. Arbitrary marks like Apple® for computers, or fanciful invented ones like Xerox®, get the strongest protection precisely because they describe nothing.

Second: check the Arizona Corporation Commission's name database

Go to the ACC's name availability page, type your desired name into the Entity Name field, and run the availability check. The checker will tell you whether the name is available. Run it on every variation you are seriously considering, not just your favorite.

Your name must also comply with A.R.S. Section 29-3112, which governs what an Arizona LLC may and may not call itself — including the required "LLC," "L.L.C." or "limited liability company" ending.

2 Appoint an Arizona Statutory Agent

Every Arizona LLC, and every out-of-state LLC registered to do business in Arizona, must have and continuously maintain a statutory agent located in Arizona. Other states call this a resident agent or registered agent. The point of the office is public notice: it tells the world who is authorized to accept legal papers on the company's behalf. If someone sues your LLC, the summons and complaint go to the statutory agent.

The statutory agent must be one of the following:

• An adult individual who resides in Arizona.
• A domestic corporation formed under Arizona law.
• A foreign corporation authorized to transact business in Arizona.
• An LLC formed under Arizona law.
• An LLC authorized to transact business in Arizona.

The agent must have a physical Arizona street address. A post office box will not work. Whoever serves must complete and sign the ACC's Statutory Agent Acceptance form, which is filed along with the Articles of Organization.

A member who lives in Arizona commonly serves as the LLC's own statutory agent. That is free and perfectly legal. Two things to weigh before you do it: the address becomes a permanent public record, and if you move and forget to update the ACC, you can be sued and never learn about it until there is a default judgment against your company.

3 Prepare and File the Articles of Organization

The Articles of Organization is the document that brings the LLC into existence. There are three realistic ways to get it filed.

Option A: File online through the ACC — the easy way

The fastest and cheapest do-it-yourself route is the Corporation Commission's online eFile system. Most people finish the data entry in ten to fifteen minutes. Start by registering for an ACC account, then click Create New LLC on your dashboard. For a screen-by-screen walkthrough see my article How to File Arizona LLC Articles of Organization Online.

Option B: File on paper — the hard way

You can still do this the old-fashioned way. The "organizer" completes, signs and files the ACC's two-page Articles of Organization. If you use the paper form you must also submit both of the following:

• Either the Manager Structure Attachment (if the LLC is manager-managed) or the Member Structure Attachment (if it is member-managed); and
• The signed Statutory Agent Acceptance form.

The ACC publishes instructions for the Articles and a complete set of Arizona LLC forms.

One wrinkle: if somebody already holds an Arizona trade name identical to your LLC's desired name, you must also file a Notice of Transfer of Limited Liability Company Name Reservation signed by the trade name holder. See the instructions for that form.

Deliver or mail the signed Articles, the cover sheet, and cash or a check for the filing fee to the Corporation Commission at 1300 W. Washington, 1st Floor, Phoenix, AZ 85007. The office is open Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., excluding holidays. The ACC does not accept credit cards for paper filings.

Option C: Hire an Arizona LLC attorney

I offer three LLC formation packages: $497 Bronze, $897 Silver and $1,397 Gold. The Gold package is the confidential LLC, for people who do not want their name and address appearing in the Arizona Corporation Commission's public records. Compare the contents of all three packages. Your LLC is created and approved by the ACC the same day you pay and approve your questionnaire.

To hire us, call 480-664-7478 and give your information over the phone, or submit the online LLC formation questionnaire at any hour.

4 Pay the Filing Fee

The filing fee is due when you submit the Articles of Organization.

Service	Cost	What you get
Standard review	$50	Can take up to a month for the ACC to approve or reject
Expedited review	$85 ($50 + $35)	Reviewed in the shortest time the ACC offers

Pay the extra $35. Nearly every time. Standard review is not merely slower — it can quietly eat the window you have to publish. When the Articles are approved, the approval date relates back to the filing date, which means a month spent in the review queue is a month gone from your publication deadline. You can check the ACC's current document processing times before you decide.

So the total do-it-yourself cost to form an Arizona LLC is $50, or $85 with expediting. And here is the genuinely good news that surprises people coming from California or Nevada: Arizona charges no annual report fee and no annual LLC franchise tax. Once your LLC exists, the state does not send you a bill every year to keep it alive.

5 Publish a Notice of Publication — Only Sometimes

This step trips up more new Arizona LLCs than any other, largely because most of them do not have to do it and the ones that do often do not realize it.

The rule: if your statutory agent's street address is in Maricopa County or Pima County, you do not have to publish. If the statutory agent's address is anywhere else in Arizona, you must publish a notice of the filing of the Articles of Organization in a newspaper of general circulation in that county, for three consecutive publications.

What the notice must say

1. The name of the LLC, stated in a form that complies with A.R.S. Section 29-3112.
2. The principal address, which may be the same as the statutory agent's mailing address.
3. The name and the Arizona street and mailing addresses of the statutory agent.
4. Whether the company is manager-managed or member-managed, plus:
   • if manager-managed — the name and address of each manager, and of each member owning 20% or more of the capital or profits; or
   • if member-managed — the name and address of every member.

An affidavit evidencing publication may be filed with the Commission.

Timing and cost

If you are required to publish, you may wait until the ACC actually approves the Articles before you run the notice. If the Articles get rejected, you have not wasted the publication money.

Budget $55 to $85. The exact price depends on the newspaper, the county, and how long your notice runs — a member-managed LLC with six members produces a much longer, more expensive notice than a single-member one.

6 Sign an Operating Agreement

Arizona law does not require an LLC or PLLC to have an Operating Agreement. This is the single most misunderstood fact in Arizona LLC law, because "not required" gets heard as "not important."

An LLC without an Operating Agreement is not governed by nothing. It is governed by the default provisions of the Arizona Limited Liability Company Act — a set of rules written by the legislature for strangers, which will apply to you, your spouse, your partners and your heirs whether or not anyone ever reads them. There are 19 distinct ways members of an Arizona LLC can be harmed when their company lacks a well-drafted Operating Agreement. I catalogued every one of them in 19 Ways You Can Be Harmed if Your Arizona LLC Lacks a Well Written Operating Agreement. Our Operating Agreements eliminate all 19.

The best time to adopt one is the day the company is formed, while everyone still likes each other and nobody has money at stake in the answer. An Operating Agreement is like insurance: if you never need it you will not miss it, and if you need it and do not have it, you may suffer greatly. I have watched too many member disputes that a fifty-page document would have prevented.

Our two Operating Agreements

$297 — single member LLC, or a two-member LLC owned by a married couple

See the single member table of contents.

$797 — multi-member LLC

See the multi-member table of contents.

I have prepared more than 10,000 Arizona LLC Operating Agreements. Look at the length of our Operating Agreement questionnaire and you will understand why the result is genuinely customized rather than a form with your name typed into it. To order, submit the questionnaire or call me at 480-664-7478.

After the LLC Exists: Four More Tasks

Filing the Articles creates the entity. It does not make the entity usable. Here is what typically comes next.

A. Get a federal Employer Identification Number

Most new companies need an EIN. Banks require one to open an account, and any company that pays wages needs one to file payroll tax returns. You get an EIN by filing IRS Form SS-4 with the Internal Revenue Service. See also the Instructions for Form SS-4 and IRS Publication 1635.

The fastest route is the IRS online application, available Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern, with no paper filing at all. The number is issued immediately at the end of the questionnaire. It is technically provisional, but it becomes your permanent EIN unless the IRS voids it — which happens mainly when the principal officer's name and Social Security number do not match Social Security Administration records, or the business already has an EIN. Print the completed SS-4 before you leave the page; there is a "Print Form" button, and there is no second chance at it.

Alternatives: call the Tele-TIN line at 1-800-829-4933 (fill out the SS-4 first, because they will ask you to read from it), fax a completed SS-4 to 215-516-3990 for a reply in about a week, or mail it four to five weeks before you need the number.

B. Choose how the LLC will be taxed

One of the best reasons to use an LLC is that the LLC gets to pick its federal tax treatment. Depending on the number and type of members, an LLC may be classified as a sole proprietorship, a partnership, a C corporation or an S corporation.

• Single member LLC: sole proprietorship, C corporation or S corporation.
• Multi-member LLC: partnership, C corporation or S corporation.

The S corporation election is only available if the LLC independently meets every S corporation requirement. If you make no election, the IRS applies a default — partnership for multi-member LLCs, sole proprietorship for single-member ones. To elect something other than the default, file IRS Form 8832, Entity Classification Election. See IRS Publication 542 and IRS Publication 541 for the underlying rules.

Arizona is a community property state, which creates a useful option: an LLC owned solely by a husband and wife as community property may be taxed either as a sole proprietorship or as a partnership. Revenue Procedure 2002-69 confirms the IRS will accept the couple's choice.

The practical difference between corporate and partnership treatment is that partnerships are not taxpaying entities and C corporations are. Profits, losses and other tax items of an LLC taxed as a partnership pass through to the members pro rata according to ownership and land on their personal returns, which avoids the double tax a C corporation can generate.

C. Get Arizona Department of Revenue numbers and a TPT license

If your LLC will do anything taxable under Arizona's transaction privilege tax statutes, it must obtain a TPT license for each business location before it starts doing business. If it will pay wages, it also needs an Arizona withholding number and an Arizona unemployment number. All three come from the Arizona Joint Tax Application filed with the Arizona Department of Revenue.

Licensing questions on transaction privilege or withholding: (602) 542-4576, or 1-800-634-6494 from the 520 and 928 area codes. Unemployment tax questions: (602) 248-9396.

D. Handle insurance and the rest of starting a business

If the LLC will have employees, look at how to obtain workers' compensation coverage. Also consider general liability and professional liability coverage. An LLC limits your exposure; insurance pays claims. You want both.

Should You Do This Yourself?

Honestly, plenty of people can. The mechanics above are not difficult, and I have laid them out here precisely so a careful person can follow them.

But the mechanics are, as I tell clients, the tip of the iceberg. Forming the entity is one afternoon; operating a business inside it is the next twenty years. When you issue membership interests you are issuing securities, and every LLC must comply with federal and applicable state securities laws whether or not anyone involved knew that. Trademark applications may be worth filing to protect the name you just chose. How the LLC is structured, who is a manager, what happens when a member dies or divorces or wants out — none of that is decided by the Articles of Organization. It is decided by the Operating Agreement, or, if you skip that, by a statute written without you in mind.

So form it yourself if you like. Just do not stop at step four.

Related Reading

• 19 Ways You Can Be Harmed if Your Arizona LLC Lacks a Well Written Operating Agreement
• How to File Arizona LLC Articles of Organization Online
• 15 Common LLC Mistakes
• Beware the Nevada LLC / Incorporation Scam
• How to Transfer an LLC to a Trust
• How Many LLCs Should I Form for My Properties?
• Beware of the Parent LLC that Owns a Subsidiary LLC

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