These terms are written to be read, not to be impenetrable. They describe how this site works, what our affiliate relationships are, and the limits of what we publish. They are reviewed by a qualified lawyer and updated as the site changes.
These terms govern your use of incorporationbureau.com. They exist to be clear about one thing above all: this site is a publisher. Reading it is not the same as getting advice, and no page here knows anything about your situation.
Effective date: 17 August 2026
1. Who we are, and what you are agreeing to
Incorporation Bureau is owned and operated by Incorporation Bureau ("we", "us"). By using this site you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use the site.
Incorporation Bureau is a privately owned website. It is not a government agency, is not affiliated with any Secretary of State, any state business registry, or the Internal Revenue Service, and does not act on behalf of any of them. We do not file documents, we do not process applications, and we cannot alter, expedite or check the status of anything you have filed. If you need to file, use your state's official .gov registry or the IRS directly.
2. This is general information, not advice
Everything on this site — guides, state pages, comparisons, blog posts, tools — is general information published for a general audience. It is not legal advice, not tax advice, not accounting advice, and not financial or investment advice, and it must not be relied on as any of those.
We do not know your residency, your immigration status, your existing entities, your tax treaty position, your state nexus, your industry licensing, or any of the dozen other facts that change the right answer. Choosing an entity type, a formation state, or a tax election has consequences that a website cannot responsibly assess for you.
For your specific situation, consult a licensed attorney in the relevant state, a CPA or enrolled agent, or the official agency itself. Non-residents in particular should take advice before filing anything with US tax consequences — see our non-resident guidance for what those consequences look like.
3. No attorney-client relationship
We are not a law firm and we do not employ lawyers acting for you. Reading this site, following a link from it, or contacting us does not create an attorney-client relationship, and nothing you send us is privileged or confidential. Please do not send us confidential or sensitive information about your business or your legal position — we cannot protect it and we cannot act on it.
4. Accuracy, currency, and what to do when we are wrong
Filing fees, franchise taxes, annual-report deadlines, penalty amounts and processing times change without notice and differ by entity type and by circumstance. We take the following approach, and you should know what it does and does not guarantee:
- We publish figures only where we could confirm them against an official source — a Secretary of State or equivalent registry, a state revenue department, or IRS.gov.
- Where we could not confirm a figure, we do not print a number. The page links you to the official registry instead. A missing figure on this site is deliberate, not an oversight.
- We do not publish processing times, because they change constantly and we cannot verify them reliably.
- State pages whose figures are not yet fully verified are marked as such and are excluded from search indexing until they are.
Even so, a figure that was correct when we published it may be out of date by the time you read it. Always confirm the current amount and deadline with the official source before you file or pay. The official source governs; this site does not.
If you find something here that is wrong or out of date, please tell us at legal@incorporationbureau.com. We would rather be corrected than quoted.
5. Affiliate relationships and how we disclose them
This site is free to read because it earns commission on some outbound links. We think that model is fine as long as it is impossible to miss, so:
- Commercial links are labelled "Partner" where they appear, and carry rel="sponsored nofollow" in the underlying markup.
- Pages carrying commercial links show a disclosure near the recommendation itself, not only in the footer.
- Using our links costs you nothing extra. The price you pay is the price you would pay going direct.
- We currently link to: Northwest Registered Agent, doola, Firstbase, Bizee, ZenBusiness, LegalZoom, Harbor Compliance, Wise, Mercury and Revolut. This list changes; the labelling does not.
- Links to official .gov registries and to IRS.gov are never commercial and earn us nothing.
Our editorial commitment: rankings, comparisons and recommendations on this site are not sold, and are not ordered by commission rate. Where we think a partner is the wrong choice for a given reader, we say so. Where the best option pays us nothing — including doing it yourself on a state website — we say that too.
A commercial relationship is not an endorsement of a partner's service quality, pricing or conduct, and it is not a warranty. Evaluate any provider on its own current terms before you buy.
6. Third-party sites and services
When you follow a link to a partner, a government registry or any other third party, you leave this site and their terms and privacy policy apply. We do not control those sites, do not monitor them, and are not responsible for their content, availability, pricing, service, or how they handle your data. Any dealing between you and a third party — including any purchase, dispute, refund or complaint — is strictly between you and them.
7. Using this site
You may read, print and share our pages for your own personal or business use, and link to them freely. You may not republish substantial portions of our content as your own, scrape the site at a scale that degrades it for others, or use it to build a competing dataset presented as original work. Please do not use the site in a way that suggests we endorse you, your product, or your filing service.
8. Intellectual property
The text, structure, design and original data compilations on this site belong to Incorporation Bureau, except where stated. Forms, fee schedules and other material published by government agencies belong to those agencies. Company and product names of partners and other third parties — Northwest, doola, Firstbase, Bizee, ZenBusiness, LegalZoom, Harbor Compliance, Wise, Mercury, Revolut, and any others mentioned — are the trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only to identify and compare those services. Their use does not imply any affiliation with, sponsorship by, or endorsement from them beyond the affiliate relationships disclosed in section 5.
9. No warranty
The site is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that the site will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that any figure, guide or comparison is complete, current or applicable to your circumstances.
10. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, we will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, business, data or goodwill, arising from your use of — or inability to use — this site or anything you found through it. This includes decisions made in reliance on published fees, deadlines, comparisons or guidance, penalties or interest assessed by any authority, and anything a third-party provider does or fails to do.
Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights under the law of your country of residence are not affected.
11. Availability and changes
We may change, move, correct or withdraw any page at any time, and we may update these terms. Where a change to the terms is material we will update the effective date at the top of this page. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the updated terms.
12. Governing law and jurisdiction
The clause below is written in the standard form: it points at the law of the place where the operator is established, rather than naming a state or country outright. That is deliberate, and it is the clause most likely to be rewritten when a lawyer reviews these terms.
These terms are governed by the laws of the jurisdiction in which the operator of this site is established, and disputes will be heard by the courts of that same jurisdiction, without prejudice to any right you may have under the consumer-protection law of your own country to bring proceedings where you live
Note for the reviewing lawyer: this site is read worldwide and deliberately serves non-US residents, so mandatory consumer-protection rules in a reader's home country may override a chosen law or forum regardless of what this section says.
13. Privacy
What this site does and does not collect — and it collects remarkably little — is set out in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms.
14. How to contact us
Corrections, legal notices, partner enquiries and questions about these terms: legal@incorporationbureau.com. We handle correspondence by email; if a postal address is required in your jurisdiction, ask and we will provide one.
We cannot answer questions about your specific company, filing or tax position, for the reasons given in sections 2 and 3. For anything that touches your own circumstances, please speak to a licensed professional or to the agency itself.