New York Registered Agent

Every company in New York is required to have a registered agent. If you want, you can appoint the NY Secretary of State as your registered agent. However, depending on where your business is, appointing Northwest instead could save you thousands in publication costs.

That’s because there’s a New York LLC publication requirement. When you form an LLC in New York, you must publish a summary of their Articles of Organization in two newspapers in the county of their principal office address. When New York clients hire us, they can use our Albany location as their principal address so they can publish in the Albany newspapers, which are much cheaper than New York City newspapers.

Clients can later change their principal address by filing an amendment or certificate of change and spend far less than they would have paid for publishing in any NYC newspaper.

Yes, you can be your own registered agent in New York. However, after considering the registered agent requirements most business owners elect to hire a registered agent service instead. Why? Well although being your own registered agent will cost you $0, a New York registered agent’s name and address becomes part of the public record. Additionally, the registered agent is required to be available to accept service of process during normal business hours five days a week.

We accept and scan all of our New York clients’ documents on-site at our registered office in Albany, NY.

Absolutely! If you own an LLC or corporation in New York, you’ll need to file your biennial statement every two years during your business’s anniversary month. As part of our Registered Agent Service, we’ll not only send you a reminder, but we’ll give you the form you need to file and instructions on how to file it.

Please do! We love our New York City clients, and if we can help you save money, we want to. We’re the only national registered agent service that allows our clients to list our address for everything when you’re doing a filing to keep your private address off public records. If you use our Albany address, you can meet the NY LLC publishing requirement and publish in Albany newspapers instead of an expensive one in NYC.

Yes! With registered agent service, we give you five FREE scans of regular business mail (non-state and non-legal mail) a year. You can request any additional documents to be forwarded at a per document rate of $15.

Need more coverage? Our New York Mail Forwarding Service gives your business a New York business address and unlimited mail forwarding (choose daily digital scans or weekly physical forwarding).

The NYS Division of Corporations will reject your business registration filing if you don’t designate a registered agent. As we mentioned, you may designate the Secretary of State as your agent for service of process, but there are so many benefits to choosing Northwest! You’ll have a reliable registered agent, you can publish in Albany, and you’ll find all the forms and instructions you need to complete your filing instantly after you place an order.

Serving a registered agent is legal proof that you were notified. Here is what happens when we are served with a lawsuit in NY:

• A process server, sheriff, or third party will walk into our Albany office and hand us the documents (service of process), which we sign for.
• We scan the document to your online account, immediately triggering our notification system.
• The process server then gives an affidavit (a receipt of service) to the court as confirmation that they served us.

Regardless of whether you receive the documents your New York registered agent signs for on your business’s behalf, once they accept the documents, you’ve been notified. You need a New York registered agent you can trust.

To find a company’s registered agent, you’ll search New York’s online database of businesses:

• Perform a New York business name search with the Department of State, Division of Corporations.
• Type in the name of the company you’re searching for.
• Find the registered agent’s name and registered office street address in the search results.

If you want to legally notify a business through their New York registered agent service, just send a certified letter directly to the registered agent at their registered office address.

In New York, to resign as a registered agent, you need to submit a Certificate of Resignation of Registered Agent to the New York Department of State. For a more detailed walk-through, you can refer to our guide on how to resign as a registered agent in New York.