The Minnesota foreign LLC application, item by item

Leave item 2 empty when the home name works here. When you use it, the alternate name must end in one of four designators the instructions list: Limited Liability Company, LLC, Professional Limited Liability Company and PLC. It must avoid corporation and incorporated, with their abbreviations. The statute lets a company adopt an alternate even when its own name would pass, and a company whose home rename produces a refused name must pause its Minnesota business until an amended certificate is issued. The form points filers to the Secretary of State's website for a preliminary name availability check.

Item 4 names the Minnesota registered agent and registered office, and it is required. The form has a line for the agent's full name and others for the street address, city and ZIP, with MN already printed as the state. A bare PO box does not qualify. The instruction page says the company must have an agent, either an individual or a corporation validly registered in Minnesota, stationed at the registered office, and that the Secretary of State will send served papers to that agent. The registered agent statute widens the pool to an LLC with permission to operate in Minnesota, and requires that agent to staff an office at the registered address.

Item 6 is for the street address of the LLC's office back home, and it applies only where the home jurisdiction demands one. Check the home law. If an office is required, write its street address; if not, leave the field empty.

Page two adds an email address for official notices, with a box to exclude it from bulk data requests to the extent state law allows, and a name and daytime phone number for someone who can answer questions about the form. A reminder follows for entities with a financial interest in farmland, who register with the Department of Agriculture's Corporate Farm Program. The five Minnesota Business Snapshot questions come last, all optional: employees in Minnesota, owner demographics, industry, whether the work is full or part time, and gross revenue range.

The fee is $185 for a mailed filing and $205 for an expedited in-person or online filing, payable to the Minnesota Secretary of State. Mail the form with the payment to Minnesota Secretary of State, Business Services, First National Bank Building, 332 Minnesota Street, Suite N201, Saint Paul, MN 55101. The counter is staffed 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Friday, excluding holidays. Send a legible photocopy and keep the signed original.

The form itself says that if required information is not included, the document may be returned unfiled. Check these before filing: an empty required item (1, 3, 4 or 5), a mailbox as the registered office, no individual or registered entity named as agent, a principal place of business that is only a mailbox, an alternate name lacking an LLC ending, and a missing signature.

$199 plus the state fee, including your first year of registered agent service; after that the agent service renews at $149 a year.