Fictitious Business Name Filing Fee to More Than Double

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Page 3

Fictitious Business Name Filing Fee to More Than Double

By a MetNews Staff Writer

Fees for filing a fictitious business name statement in Los Angeles County will more than double beginning next month, an official with the county Registrar-Recorder’s Office said last week.

Assistant Registrar-Recorder Sharon Gonterman said the fee has been $10 for more than three decades and no longer covers the cost of processing the applications, which individuals who operate unincorporated businesses need to open bank accounts and carry on other activities in the business name. It will rise to $23 on June 1.

Renewals, which are required every five years, will increase from $10 to $18, and the office will charge $23 instead of $5 for abandoning the use of a name.

Gonterman said the fees have long been lower than those charged by other populous counties, and will remain lower than most of them. The county is required periodically to study the fees it charges so they can be adjusted to reflect costs, she explained.

Gonterman said no study of fictitious business name fees had been conducted since 1970.

“We’ve been real reasonable for a long period of time,” she declared.

Gonterman said the City and County of San Francisco charges $38 for a fictitious business name filing while Riverside County charges $35, Ventura $32, and Alameda and San Bernardino $29.

Orange County charges $23, but Sacramento charges only $20 and San Diego only $17, she noted.

The amounts of the current fees are specified under Business and Professions Code Sec. 17929. But Government Code Sec. 54985 provides that “[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law that prescribes an amount or otherwise limits the amount of a fee or charge that may be levied by a county,” the county board of supervisors can adjust the fee to an “amount reasonably necessary to recover the cost of providing any product or service.”

The board unanimously adopted an ordinance at its April 27 meeting setting the new fees under the authority of Sec. 54985. Gonterman said the study which determined the cost of processing the applications was conducted by the county Auditor’s Office.