Honestly, this is pretty normal, if aggravating. When I moved to TX, a registration for an out of state LLC was $750. The registration system required a credi

Honestly, this is pretty normal, if aggravating. When I moved to TX, a registration for an out of state LLC was $750. The registration system required a credit card up front to levy a $1 charge for every name search on a web forum to ensure the business name didn't conflict with an existing entity. Though, they will refund those fees if registration occurs. After registration, I spoke with the comptroller and they told me to register for sales tax and that would be the only tax paid. A year later, I received an angry letter from the secretary of state that I owed gross receipts tax and their estimated payment was over $1000. After some investigation, I discovered that this tax was only levied on revenue of over $1 million and TX knew precisely what I had made because of the sales tax filings and they significantly under that amount. Further, it's unclear to me why there are two different departments levying taxes in TX and why the first wouldn't give a heads up about the second. Additional filings made the problem go away. The point is not that this situation is the exact same as yours. The point is that each state has bizarre, unintuitive tax and employment law. Even if you ask, you'll likely get incorrect information from the state until an angry letter shows up. As long as your paperwork is organized, these problems can be made to go away. This is the cost of running a business. It should be easier, but it's not. Some states are easier to work with than others. Even "business friendly" states like TX are aggravating and much more so than other states that I've done business in.