A Delaware LLC working in Connecticut

Delaware allows several endings for a limited liability company, and Connecticut's form asks for a business designator such as LLC or L.L.C. Copy the Delaware name from the certificate as printed, punctuation and all. Where Connecticut cannot take the name, item 2 holds the alternate. Do not use item 2 merely to shorten a long name, since the form reserves it for a name that is unavailable.

Item 1 is the Delaware name with its ending, copied from the certificate. Item 3 says Delaware and item 4 gives the formation date from the Delaware certificate. Item 7 is blank unless Delaware makes the LLC keep an office there. Item 10 needs a Connecticut agent in one of three forms, since the Delaware registered agent cannot serve in Connecticut unless it is also registered with the Connecticut office and has a Connecticut address. Item 11 lists at least one manager or member.

Some Delaware LLCs sit above operating companies. Registration is asked entity by entity, so whether the parent must register depends on what the parent does in Connecticut, not on what its subsidiaries do. A holding LLC that does nothing in the state is a different case from the operating LLC that employs people here. Where an operating LLC registers, the Delaware parent's name appears only if it is listed as a member, and every member name on item 11 becomes part of the public record.

Delaware's tax is annual and so is Connecticut's report, so a clean comparison is one year. The yearly cost of staying current in both is $480: $400 to Delaware and $80 to Connecticut. In year one add the $120 statement. If Connecticut is a small part of the business, set those numbers against the cost of forming a Connecticut LLC instead, which is a question for an accountant and a lawyer.