CA Secretary of State Unveils New “Bizfile CA” Portal

Today the California Secretary of State launched a new online portal called “Bizfile California” which will make some tasks associated with business formation a little easier.

Despite its location in arguably the tech capital of the world, the California Secretary of State still relies primarily on snail mail to conduct tasks such as forming an LLC or a corporation, or generating certified copies of business records. With Bizfile California, business searching and certain business-related filings can be accessed from one location. The only filings accomodated online with Bizfile are Statements of Information for LLCs (a new addition) and corporations (which were allowed already for several years), and filing financing statements pursuant to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC).

Hopefully, online filing of Articles of Incorporation or Organization will follow, which would drastically improve turnaround times of three weeks on average because of waiting for the mail (yes, you can expedite filing, but who wants to pay $350-$750 extra??). One can only hope that California will catch up to Ohio: I was amazed when I formed an LLC in Ohio for a client; I submitted the filing at 5:30PM PST Friday (not expedited mind you) and received a certified copy of the formation document via email on Monday morning at 9:03AM EST!

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