Mainstay Filing vs doola

Formation package, $199 a year. We prepare and file your formation, apply for your EIN, serve as your registered agent and prepare and file your annual report every year it's due. The state's own fees are passed through at cost, and the price is the same in year one and every year after.

No SSN or ITIN? Add $99 once: we prepare Form SS-4 for a foreign owner, you sign online and we fax it to the IRS. How it works for non-US founders.

Already formed? Our registered agent alone is $149 a year, the same at renewal.

From doola's own pages: Starter is $297 a year plus state fees, for US LLC or C Corp formation, an EIN and a US business address, and all plans are billed annually. Its registered agent page lists the service at $297 a year. Tax and Compliance is $1,999 a year and adds federal and state tax filing. doola's terms say recurring fees renew automatically at the rates then in effect and that payments are nonrefundable. Its pricing page doesn't make clear whether Starter includes the annual state report filing.

Three years with Mainstay Filing is $597, with the registered agent and the annual report filing included each year, or $696 for a founder with no SSN or ITIN (the $99 is paid once). Three years of doola's Starter plan is $891, before anything its pricing page doesn't spell out.

Forming from abroad works the same way with us as it does for a US owner: the same $199 a year in every state our checkout lists, with the state's fees at cost. The one difference is the EIN. Without an SSN or ITIN, the IRS only accepts a paper Form SS-4, so we prepare it with "foreign" in the SSN field, you sign online and we fax it in. That's the $99 one-time charge, and the IRS takes 2 to 8 weeks to issue an EIN filed this way.

The federal filings for a foreign-owned LLC are the same whichever company forms it. A single-member LLC owned by a non-US person generally files Form 5472 with a pro forma Form 1120 each year it has reportable transactions with its owner. Our non-US founder guide walks through it, and Wyoming vs Delaware vs New Mexico compares the three states most founders abroad ask about.

Changing your registered agent is a filing with the state that names the new agent and address. We prepare and file it for you, and you pay only the state's own change fee, at cost. doola's terms say recurring fees renew automatically, so cancel its plan once the change of agent is on file.

We don't prepare Form 5472 or any tax return, run bookkeeping or rent out a virtual office address. If you want tax filing and bookkeeping from the same company that formed your LLC, that's the part of doola's higher plans we don't offer. Our registered agent address is for the agent role, and physical mail forwarding isn't included in any plan; legal papers and the first three government mailings each year are scanned for you.