Your business goes by a name that is not your own legal name. It is painted on the van, printed on your invoices, and on the card you hand somebody after a meeting.
Florida has a form for that second name, and a date it runs out. The state calls the name a fictitious name. Most owners call it a DBA, which is short for doing business as, and in Florida it is one $50 form.
So the questions are simple ones. Do you have to file this at all, and what does it cost you to do it? Does filing it stop anybody else from using the same name? And is the one you filed years ago still any good?
A Florida DBA costs $50, and Florida law makes you do one thing before you file it: put a small notice in a local newspaper. The registration then runs until December 31 of its fifth year, and it is gone unless you renew it for another $50.
- You file it at Sunbiz, which is the state's own filing site.
- An LLC or a corporation only needs one when it sells under a name different from the one the state already has on file for it.
- Registering puts your name in the public record. It does not stop anybody else from registering the same name.
- Until you register, you cannot bring a case in a Florida court over work you did under that name.
Where that comes from: section 865.09 of the Florida Statutes, which the state calls the Fictitious Name Act, and the filing pages the Division of Corporations publishes itself. If your company is an LLC, read this next to what the annual report does for your active status, because the two filings lean on each other.
I am Dr. Michael Wendrow. I have run a chiropractic office in North Miami for more than 30 years, and I started Prime Time Business Network in 2012.
By the time you finish this you will know whether you need to register at all, what the steps cost you, the date your registration quietly runs out, what the $50 does and does not protect, and what the law stops you doing until the name is on file.
- The state has to email you by September 1 of the year your name expires, and the law says not receiving that email is no grounds for an appeal.
- An expired fictitious name cannot be renewed or brought back. You start again with a new filing and a new newspaper ad.
- Your county asks to see this registration when you renew your local business tax receipt.
Do you even need a DBA in Florida?
Start with the two names, because that is the whole test. Write down the legal name first: your own name if you never formed a company, or the exact company name the state has on file if you did.
Then write down the name a customer reads on your invoice. If those two are different, the law wants the second one registered.
Here is the reason the state asks for any of this. A customer who hires Sunshine Kitchens should be able to find out whose business that is, so Florida keeps a public list of these names and the newspaper notice is the first public word that a name is coming.
So section 865.09 says a person may not engage in business under a fictitious name unless the person first registers the name with the division. First is the word to notice. You are meant to file before you take the work, not after somebody asks you for the paperwork.
Here is the part that saves a lot of owners $50. If you already formed a company and you sell under its exact name, you register nothing.
The Division of Corporations lists the exemption on its own fictitious name page: a legal business entity already filed with the office, whose status is active and which is not transacting business under any other name.
Can an LLC have a DBA? Yes, and plenty do. If the state has your company as Miller Interiors LLC and your sign says Sunshine Kitchens, the sign name goes on file. If the sign says Miller Interiors LLC, nothing does.
One thing trips up a company filing this. The state checks your Florida document number and your active status. A company that lost its status cannot put a new name on file until that is fixed.
What it costs and how to register a DBA in Florida
A Florida DBA registration is one form and $50. What slows people down is the first step, because it happens outside the state's website and it has to happen first.
- Put a notice in a local newspaper, once. The law makes you do it before you file, so you cannot skip it. It is a few lines saying you intend to register the name, printed in a paper in the county your business works out of.
- File the Florida fictitious name registration and pay $50. You can do the whole thing online.
- Put an email address you actually read on the form. Every notice the state sends about this name goes to that address, including the one that tells you the registration is about to expire.
The state never asks to see that notice. The Division of Corporations says in its own filing instructions that no proof of advertisement is required, because you certify the name was advertised when you sign the application.
That is not a loophole. The same instructions warn that making a false statement on the form is a third degree felony, which is a long way worse than the $50 you were trying to save.
| What you are filing | Fee |
|---|---|
| Registering a name | $50 |
| Renewing it for another five years | $50 |
| Cancelling a name, or cancelling and registering it again | $50 |
| A certified copy of your registration | $30 |
| A certificate of status | $10 |
Your registration dies on December 31 of its fifth year
A fictitious name registration runs out on December 31 of its fifth calendar year. The counting is the bit that surprises people, so here is how the state does it.
The year you file counts as year one, even if you filed it in November. Then four more calendar years run. On December 31 of that fifth year, the registration is finished.
A name registered any time in 2022 expires on December 31, 2026.
Your Florida DBA renewal costs $50. A fictitious name renewal in Florida can go in any time from January 1 to December 31 of that year, so the window is open as you read this and it closes in a few weeks.
The state does warn you. Section 865.09 gives the division a deadline for warning you. It has to tell you by September 1 of your expiry year, and it sends that notice by email when it has an email address for you.
Then comes the line that decides who gets caught: failure to receive the notice of expiration is not grounds for appeal of a registration's expiration or removal from the division's records. An old email address is the most common reason an owner finds out late.
Miss it and you lose something you cannot buy back. An LLC that misses its annual report can be reinstated years later, and the state treats those weeks as though they never happened.
A fictitious name has no reinstatement at all. No form brings an expired one back, so the name simply stops being yours. The Division of Corporations answers it in one sentence on its renewal page: an expired fictitious name cannot be renewed or reinstated.
What you do instead is register the name again from scratch, with another ad in the paper and another $50.
Registering the name does not make it yours
Section 865.09 says registration is for public notice only and does not give rise to a presumption of the registrant's rights to own or use the name registered. The same subsection adds that registration does not reserve a fictitious name against future use, and that it does not touch trademark or corporate name rights somebody else already had.
So does anybody own the name? Not through this filing. Owning a name means registering it as a trademark. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office draws the line in one sentence: you register a trade name with your state to do business there, and you register a trademark with them to secure nationwide ownership rights.
Sunbiz is just as direct about duplicates. It says the Division of Corporations will not deny a registration for a duplicate name, and that every application gets registered when the filing requirements are met. So another business can file the name you are using and appear beside you in the same public index.
What happens if you never register it
Section 865.09 says that while a business is out of compliance, neither the business nor the people running it may maintain any action, suit or proceeding in any court of this state on behalf of that business until the section is complied with.
Read that against a job that went wrong. You did the work, the customer will not pay, and the courthouse door is shut until you file a $50 form you could have filed two years ago.
Two details soften it, and one makes it worse. Your contracts stay valid, and you can still defend yourself if somebody sues you. But the same subsection lets a party on the other side be awarded reasonable attorney fees and court costs that your non-compliance caused.
Then the penalty itself. The statute says failing to comply is a noncriminal violation, and the fine cap for one of those is $500.
Worth knowing: the Division's own frequently asked questions page still describes it as a second degree misdemeanor, which is how the law read before it was changed. The statute is the law as it reads now, and either way the fine is not the number that should worry you.
There is a quieter consequence that shows up sooner than any of this. Your county wants to see the registration when you apply for a local business tax receipt, which is the same filing that carries the September 30 deadline most owners here miss.
The name they repeat has to be the name you can invoice
This is the part I care about most, because it is what I watch happen in a referral room.
When a member sends you work, they say your name out loud to somebody else. That person writes it down, searches it, and writes a check to whatever they heard.
One name on the card, in the public index, on the invoice and on the bank account is what makes that check clear.
Prime Time Business Network runs fifteen chapters across South Florida with one business category per chapter, so the owner beside you is not competing with you. If you want the other half of this, here is how owners send each other customers on purpose.
Common questions about a Florida DBA
Does a DBA need a separate EIN? No, and the IRS says so plainly. Changing your business name is on its list of changes that do not call for a new number. Your trade name rides on the tax number you already have.
Can I put LLC or Inc in my DBA name? Only if you really are one of those. Florida will not register a fictitious name carrying a company ending such as LLC, Corp or Inc unless one of the owners on the form is a company of that type.
Can I reword my registered name at renewal? No, the renewal form gives you no way to do it, though it does let you update the owners. Changing Sunshine Kitchens to Sunshine Kitchens and Baths means cancelling the old name and registering the new one, which is another newspaper ad and another $50.
Sort your filings out alongside other South Florida owners
If you would rather work through this with owners who file the same paperwork you do, find the group that fits your business category and ask Mark Hirsch whether the seat is open.