For the attention of the owner, Business Privacy Guide
Names and addresses on public business filings
Addressee
The owner, ••••• ••••••
Delivered to
The address on the public record
Home address
•• •••••• •••••
Business Privacy Guide

Keeping your name and home address off public business filings

When you form an LLC or a corporation, the state publishes some of what you file. This guide explains what goes on that record, and how registered agents, mail forwarding and state privacy rules decide whose name and which address a stranger can look up.

See what gets published What the guide covers
  • Legal papers Service of process, handed to the agent named on the state record
  • State notice A reminder from the filing office that a report is due
  • Ordinary post Letters, offers and solicitations sent to the public address
The public record

What a formation filing puts in the open

Formation documents are public in every state, and anyone can search them. What they contain varies, but the same few details turn up again and again, and each one is either an address or a name.

Printed on the record

What states commonly ask for

  • The name and street address of the registered agent
  • A principal office address, and often a separate mailing address
  • The name of whoever organised or incorporated the business
  • In some states, the names of members, managers, directors or officers
Can often be moved

Where an owner usually has a choice

  • A registered agent other than yourself, so the agent address is not your home
  • A mail-forwarding or business address in place of a home address where the state allows it
  • A filing service or attorney acting as organiser instead of the owner
  • A state whose formation filing asks for fewer names, where that genuinely suits the business

Privacy here means keeping personal details off a public search, not hiding who owns a business from the authorities. Banks, tax agencies and courts can still ask, and a business has to answer them.

How the guide is sorted

What this guide covers

The subject splits into a handful of questions, sorted here the way the mail itself sorts: by who it is from and which address it reaches.

  • Agents

    Registered agents and the address they put on the record

    What a registered agent is for, why every state requires one, and what changes when the agent is a commercial service rather than the owner at home.

  • Post

    Mail forwarding, virtual offices and business addresses

    The difference between an address that can receive legal papers and one that only forwards ordinary post, and which a state will accept for which purpose.

  • Names

    Whose name appears on formation papers

    Organisers, incorporators, members and managers: which of them a state publishes, and when someone other than the owner can sign.

  • Reports

    Annual reports and changes of address

    How a later filing can put a home address back on the record after a careful formation, and how to change an address the right way.

  • States

    How privacy differs from state to state

    Some states ask for far more on a public filing than others. The guide explains the difference in words, without pretending one state suits everyone.

  • Home

    Running a business from home without publishing the house

    The practical case most owners start from: a business run from a spare room, and the filings and mail that would otherwise point straight at it.

Enclosed with every page

The small print, printed plainly

Four things hold true across the whole site, so they are set out once here rather than repeated at the foot of every page.

  • Explained in words

    Where one option suits an owner better than another, the reason is written out. Nothing on this site is scored or graded.

  • State rules differ

    Filing requirements are set state by state and change over time. Your state filing office has the final word on what it publishes.

  • Not legal advice

    A plain explanation is not a legal opinion. An attorney in your state can confirm what your own filings require.

  • Commission is disclosed

    Where a page carries an affiliate link to a service, it says so, and a commission never decides how an option is described.

Reading your mail

Open it, read it, file it

Once a business has a public address, mail starts to arrive there. The same three questions apply to every envelope, whether it holds a lawsuit or a sales letter.

  1. Open

    Who sent it and why it came to that address: the state, a court, a vendor or a stranger who found the address on a public filing.

  2. Read

    What it asks of the business, and whether it is a legal document with a deadline or ordinary post that can wait.

  3. File

    Where the answer lands on the public record, which address it will show, and what is worth keeping in the business records.