Maryland Foreign Corporation
Certificate of Authority Filing Service
If you want to do business in Maryland but are a corporation based in a state other than Maryland, you need to register your corporation with the state of Maryland. A certificate of authority from the state of Maryland is obtained by submitting paperwork as a foreign corporation with the Corporations Division of the Maryland Secretary of State.
A Maryland foreign corporation is not to be confused with an out-of-country corporation. Any corporation not originally formed in the state of Maryland is called a “foreign” corporation.
If you want to register a foreign Maryland corporation, we charge $100 plus state filing fees to prepare and file a certificate of authority with the Maryland Secretary of State. We will also obtain the paperwork needed from your home state (the state originally incorporated in).
If you prefer to do the filing yourself: sign up for our resident agent service in Maryland and you will be instantly logged into your online account, where you will find the foreign corporation qualification form, pre-filled with our resident agent information. As an added bonus, we’ve included some submission tips on how to make the filing with the state. You are required to have a resident agent in Maryland anyway, so we try to make this an easy process for you, whether you want us to submit your papers or you want to send them to the Maryland Secretary of State yourself.
How do I sign up?
- Sign up for our resident agent service.
- Next, if you don’t want to fill out and submit the certificate of authority documents yourself, you just click the “Add services” tab in your account, and add our foreign corporation filing services for the state filing fees plus $100. You can see the real time status of the filing in your online account at all times.
- We will email you the original filed documents and mail the original filed documents once the Maryland foreign corporation registration filing is complete. We always store the filing in your online account so it is always available if you need it.