New York and Florida Legal Support at Your Fingertips: Remote Services Available Now!
New York and Florida Legal Support at Your Fingertips: Remote Services Available Now!
Filing your LLC on Sunbiz feels like the finish line. It’s the starting gun.
A filed company has no agreement between its owners, no federal tax ID, no permission to collect sales tax, and no local paperwork until you handle each one yourself. Six separate authorities:- county, city, state, and federal – each want something from a new two-partner Florida company, and none of their pages tell you the order to do it in.
After the state accepts your Sunbiz filing, a two-partner Florida LLC still owes paperwork at four more levels: an agreement between the owners, a federal tax ID, local and state registrations, and a yearly renewal. Specifically: a signed operating agreement, an EIN from the IRS, a Brevard County business tax receipt (plus a city one if your address sits inside a municipality), registration with the Florida Department of Revenue before your first taxable sale or hire, any state license your trade requires, and an annual report filed every year after formation.
This page puts all of it in order for a two-partner LLC with a Brevard County address: what to sign first, what each agency charges, when it’s due, and which two steps you should not try to do yourself.
A filed company and a running company are two different things, and the gap between them is a sequence, not a mystery. Here’s the order a two-partner Brevard LLC follows after Sunbiz accepts the filing.
Sunbiz creates the company. The operating agreement comes first, and the rest come from separate offices.
Steps two and three are where most of the confusion in the Brevard business owner’s question actually lives. The next section takes on the one only partners face.
An operating agreement is the contract between you and your partner that decides how the company actually runs: who can sign on its behalf, how profits move, and what happens the day the two of you disagree.
If you never sign one, Florida’s own rules fill the gap for you. Under section 605.0105 of the Florida Statutes, the operating agreement governs relations among members and with the LLC, and chapter 605 governs whatever the agreement doesn’t address, with a short list of matters it can’t override. Skipping the agreement doesn’t mean no rules apply. It means the state’s rules apply instead of yours.
Andrea A. Willis has reviewed enough AI-generated and template operating agreements to know which decisions they skip most often:
A document that leaves these blank isn’t simply light on detail. It’s a company with no answer for the exact moments when an answer is needed most.
A 50/50 split sounds fair on paper, and that’s exactly what makes it risky: neither partner can outvote the other, so a disagreement with no tiebreaker can freeze the company instead of resolving. We recommend that two owners splitting a company evenly settle both a decision process and a neutral tiebreaker before they sign, not after a dispute has already started.
A pattern we see often: two friends form an LLC on a template or AI-generated agreement with no buyout formula, no deadlock language, and no valuation method. One of them wants out two years later, and there’s no mechanism for that. The company is frozen, not because the business failed, but because the paperwork never said what happens next.
When one 50/50 partner wants out, a blank template leaves the company frozen. A settled agreement already says what happens next.
How the LLC itself gets taxed is a separate question from what the agreement settles, and it’s not one the agreement answers. Our Florida business attorney works alongside your CPA or tax advisor on that question rather than in place of one. Our firm drafts custom Florida operating agreements for exactly this kind of two-owner company, built around the decisions above instead of leaving them blank.
Brevard businesses can owe paperwork at up to four local and state layers, each issued by a different office, each triggered differently, and each silent on something it doesn’t cover:
| Layer | Who issues it | When it applies | What it does not confirm |
|---|---|---|---|
| County business tax receipt | Brevard County Tax Collector | Required for most businesses with a Brevard address | Doesn’t confirm your zoning or land use is correct for that address |
| City business tax receipt | The city where your business sits, such as Melbourne or Cocoa Beach, each issuing its own | Required in addition to the county receipt if your address is inside a municipality’s limits | Doesn’t replace the county receipt, and each city sets its own rules |
| Fictitious name registration | Florida Division of Corporations (Sunbiz) | Required if the name on your business tax receipt isn’t your company’s legal name | Doesn’t issue a business tax receipt on its own |
| State occupational license | The state agency that regulates your specific trade | Required if your trade is one Florida regulates | Doesn’t substitute for either business tax receipt |
Melbourne and Cocoa Beach are incorporated cities with their own receipt process. Viera is unincorporated, so a Viera business works through the county layer and county zoning instead of a city office.
Inside a city like Melbourne or Cocoa Beach you need both receipts. In unincorporated Viera, the county receipt and county zoning apply.
The Brevard County Tax Collector’s business tax receipt page walks through all four layers and notes that getting a receipt doesn’t by itself confirm your zoning is correct for that address. Worth a call to county or city zoning before you sign a lease, not after.
Before you make your first taxable sale, or hire your first employee, whichever comes first, you register as a dealer with the Florida Department of Revenue.
One application covers both the sales side and the employment side, so there’s no separate filing to track down if you’re doing both.
Four items recur, either every year or once at setup, and the only figures below are the fees the agencies themselves set, as of October 2026.
| Item | Agency | Government fee (as of October 2026) | When it’s due |
|---|---|---|---|
| County business tax receipt | Brevard County Tax Collector | $37 per year | Renews annually, due by September 30 |
| City business tax receipt | Your city’s tax collector or clerk | Set by the city | Varies by city |
| EIN | IRS | Free | Once, after the LLC is filed |
| LLC annual report | Florida Division of Corporations | $138.75 if filed by May 1; $400 late fee after May 1 | Every year, due May 1 |
There’s no waiver on that late fee, even if you never received a reminder notice. Put May 1 and September 30 on the calendar the day your LLC is approved, not the week before.
Some of this list is genuinely yours to handle with the instructions above. Some of it is where a mistake is expensive to undo.
Handle these yourself, using the steps above:
Have a lawyer handle these:
We routinely see Sunbiz filings that owners made themselves and later need corrected. Fixing a filing error after the fact typically costs more than our flat fee for doing it correctly the first time, which is the reason this page doesn’t walk you through the Sunbiz filing step by step.
The same caution applies to the agreement you and your partner sign. Andrea A. Willis puts it this way:
I regularly review AI-generated operating agreements, ChatGPT legal documents, and online LLC templates for business owners who assumed their agreements were solid… contracts drafted from online templates and AI systems that contain serious legal weaknesses invisible to non-lawyers.
I have seen six-figure businesses collapse because a generic AI operating agreement or online template failed to properly address ownership exits, distributions, voting authority, or transfer restrictions.
Some of the worst partnership disputes and LLC lawsuits I see begin with an operating agreement that appeared ‘good enough’ when the company was formed… Many business disputes are entirely predictable years before they happen.”
A template or AI-generated agreement can look complete and still be missing exactly the clauses two partners end up needing. Alicia Vaughn, who formed an LLC with two other people, described the same gap from the owner’s side: “I started a business with two other people and we tried to set up an LLC by ourselves and didn’t realize how complicated it was. We reached out to Andrea for help and she has been amazing with answering ALL of our questions. She helped us get our LLC official and complete. It was such a weight off my shoulders.”
Handing the filing and the agreement to a lawyer answers the question most owners ask next: what does that cost, and what do you actually get for it?
Our Florida LLC Package is $931 and includes filing fees, as of October 1, 2026. It includes:
The $931 fee includes the $125 Florida Articles of Organization filing fee, the $30 certified copy, and all legal fees for drafting and formation of your LLC. Lawyer For Business lists a 24 to 48 hour turnaround for the package.
Matched against the sequence earlier on this page, the package covers the two steps this page recommends you not do alone: the Sunbiz filing and the operating agreement. The county receipt, the state registration, and any license your trade requires stay with you, using the instructions above.
All of this happens remotely, the same way our firm serves clients throughout Brevard County and across Florida. Andrea A. Willis is licensed in both New York and Florida, and our firm handles Florida LLC formation for owners in exactly this position.
If you’re ready to talk through your own two-partner company, you can book a Florida consultation.
The Sunbiz filing starts the company. Everything on this list, from the operating agreement to the annual report, is what keeps it running and decides whether you and your partner are the ones controlling it or Florida’s default rules are.
Is BOI reporting still required for U.S. companies and U.S. persons?
No. A final rule effective August 14, 2026 made the exemption from BOI reporting permanent for companies formed in the United States, which includes a newly formed Florida LLC.
That’s a change from the reporting requirement that was in effect in earlier years, so if you read an older article about filing a BOI report, it no longer reflects the current rule.
Does SunBIZ give you an EIN number?
No. The IRS issues the EIN, not the state, and it’s free to apply.
Apply online after your Sunbiz filing is accepted. If your application is approved, the IRS issues the EIN immediately.
What is considered a business license in Florida?
Locally, it’s the business tax receipt that Brevard County and its cities each levy on most businesses.
If your trade is one Florida regulates, such as construction or cosmetology, you’ll also need that trade’s state license alongside your local receipt. The local layer section above covers how the county and city receipts work together.
The information on this page is not, nor is it intended to be, legal advice. Contacting us does not create an attorney-client relationship. Please do not send any confidential information to us until an attorney-client relationship has been established.
