DBA Rules Namespace (dba-rules/states/*.json)
Additive namespace — DBA / assumed name / fictitious name / trade name filing
rules per state, hand-researched from official state statutes, Secretary of State
guidance, and (where filing is county-level) official county filing-office pages.
This directory is independent of entitysearch-state-data/ and name-rules/ and
never modifies them; consumers of the existing namespaces are unaffected.
Coverage is complete: 51 of 51 jurisdictions, meaning all 50 states plus the
District of Columbia (washington-d-c.json, stateAbbr: "DC"). The namespace
began with 5 pilot states (GA, TX, CA, FL, OH) and reached full coverage on
2026-07-23.
Schema extended 2026-07-18: filingLevel gained a fourth value, "none", for
states with no DBA / assumed-name registration for LLCs, corporations, and sole
proprietors. South Carolina (no statewide filing; trading names are a local
business-license matter, with a narrow LP / foreign-entity assumed-name exception
at the SoS) and Kansas (no registry at any level; the SoS forms list says no
application registers an assumed, fictitious, trade, or DBA name) are recorded
this way. For "none" states the fee, duration, publication, and filing fields
describe the absence and the nearest real instrument, and llcFee stays null.
Schema
| Field | Type | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
stateName / stateAbbr / stateSlug | string | Same identifiers as entitysearch-state-data/states/*.json |
dbaTerm | string | What the state's own statute calls the filing (e.g. "assumed name", "trade name", "fictitious business name") |
filingLevel | "state" | "county" | "split" | "none" | Which level of government takes the filing; "split" = depends on owner type; "none" = no such filing exists in the state |
llcFilesWith | string | The office an LLC or corporation files with |
soleProprietorFilesWith | string | The office a sole proprietor or partnership files with |
llcFee | number | null | Fixed statewide cost in USD on the LLC filing path; null when each county sets its own fee (see feeBasis) |
feeBasis | string | What the fee covers, why it is null, or verified county examples. Never compare llcFee across states without reading this |
duration | string | How long the registration lasts (e.g. "5 years", "No expiration") |
renewalRule | string | null | Renewal window and terms |
publicationRequired | boolean | Whether a newspaper publication step exists |
publicationRule | string | null | The publication requirement with statute cite |
protectionLevel | "none" | "county-presumption" | "exclusive-registration" | The strongest name protection the state's DBA-type filing can carry |
protectionNote | string | What the filing legally does or does not do to name rights, statute-backed |
searchUrl | string | null | Official lookup for existing registrations; null when no statewide index exists |
searchNote | string | How existing registrations are actually searched |
filingUrl | string | null | Official how-to or filing page |
statuteCitation / statuteUrl | string | Governing statute and an accessible copy of it |
notes | string | null | Nuances: deadlines, penalties, terminology traps |
sources | {citation, title, url, lastAccessed}[] | Sources used for verification (citation = authority or statute number, title = document title) |
lastVerified | string | ISO date of last manual verification |
Sourcing rules
Same integrity protocol as the root dataset: see Methodology in the
repository README for what counts as an official
source, which non-.gov hosts are official, and the exact conditions of the
exception below. Every fact is verified against official government sources
(statutes, administrative codes, Secretary of State and county filing-office
pages); every file carries its sources and lastVerified.
A handful of states license their code to a commercial publisher and put no free
citable copy online (Georgia's O.C.G.A. is the clearest case). Only there may
statuteUrl point at a verbatim mirror, and only when the record also carries an
official source that independently supports the same fact and its notes field
says the state publishes no free official copy. Everywhere an official copy of the
statute is reachable, a mirror is a defect.
Copy style: no em dashes in any string field (they render on consumer sites); en dash only between numbers.
Usage
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/startupsolellc/us-llc-fees-dataset/main/dba-rules/states/{state-slug}.json