On July 7, 2026, Senator Carmen Amato's bill to reduce business filing fees was signed into law, and the New Jersey Treasury made it effective immediately on July 1, 2026: the standard fee to form a business entity dropped from $125 to $100, and the filing fee for domestic nonprofit organizations dropped from $75 to $50.
For a state often ranked among the more expensive to start a business, $25 does not change the economics — but it does lower the friction for first-time founders and for nonprofits where every dollar is a program dollar. Here is what the cut covers and what it does not.
What Got Cheaper
Effective July 1, 2026, the $25 reduction applies to:
- Certificate of Formation — LLC and LLP
- Certificate of Incorporation — for-profit corporation and limited partnership (LP)
- Certificate of Authority — foreign corporations, foreign LPs, and foreign nonprofits registering to do business in New Jersey
For domestic nonprofits, the separate formation filing fee fell from $75 to $50.
The reduction is per filing, not per entity forever. An LLC that forms for $100 still pays the $75 annual report in its anniversary month, still pays $28 for a registered agent change, and still pays optional expedite fees of $25 (8.5-hour) to $1,000 (1-hour) if you need same-day or one-hour processing. Standard online formation is typically one business day without expedite.
What Did Not Change
- Annual report: $75, due in the formation anniversary month. The $25 cut does not recur annually — it is a one-time formation saving.
- Expedite fees: unchanged. The $25 cut is not an expedite waiver — if you pay $50 for same-day, your total is $150, not $125.
- Registered agent: still required with a physical New Jersey address. Using yourself is free but publishes your home address and requires business-hour availability; a commercial agent runs $0–$150/year.
The Bookkeeping Note
Formation fees are capitalized as organization costs and amortized over 60 months for tax (or expensed under the small-business safe harbor if eligible). A $25 saving is not material to the P&L, but the filing fee itself is a one-time organizational cost that should be booked to organization costs, not to general legal expense, for correct amortization.
Simplify Your Financial Management
A $25 cut does not make New Jersey the cheapest state to form in — New York's $200 formation with $9 biennial report and Pennsylvania's $125 with $70 annual report remain comparators — but it does make the Garden State slightly more welcoming for the next founder. Beancount.io keeps every formation fee, every annual report, and every registered agent charge in plain-text, version-controlled accounting — so your next entity's cost is visible from the first filing. Get started for free and keep your formation finances as organized as your operating agreement.