How to File a DBA in Texas (Form 503) Without a Lawyer

Filing a DBA (or an assumed name certificate — DBA is short for “doing business as”, which is the informal name of the form) is one of those tasks I regularly tell people not to hire me for. We’ll do it if a client wants it off their plate, but honestly, this is a form most business owners can handle themselves in fifteen minutes, for a modest state filing fee (currently $25), without paying a lawyer or one of those online filing services that charges triple for the privilege of retyping your answers.

In the video above I do a full screen-share walkthrough of the Texas form. This article covers the same ground with a bit more legal detail: what a DBA actually is under Texas law, where to file it (this part trips up more people than the form itself), and a field-by-field guide to Form 503.

“DBA” stands for “doing business as.” Texas law calls it an assumed name, and the governing statute is Chapter 71 of the Texas Business and Commerce Code, the Assumed Business or Professional Name Act. When you file an assumed name certificate, you’re telling the state (and the public): this entity or person is conducting business under a name other than its legal name.

That’s it. That is the entire function of the filing. And that’s where a shocking amount of confusion comes in, because a lot of people think a DBA is basically the same thing as an LLC. I’ve seen this mistake over and over, so let me give you the analogy I use in the video.

An LLC, corporation, or limited partnership is a suit of armor. If you’ve sized it correctly, maintained it, and kept it oiled, it stands between your personal assets and your business liabilities.

A DBA is a name tag slapped on the front of the armor. It says “Ryan is doing business as Cool Guy Lawyers,” and it entitles you to put up a sign that says Cool Guy Lawyers. It protects you from exactly NOTHING. If you’re a sole proprietor with a DBA and the business gets sued, you personally get sued, name tag and all. If you’re an LLC with a DBA and the business gets sued, the LLC gets sued.

Two more things a DBA doesn’t do, while we’re at it. It doesn’t give you exclusive rights to the name; an assumed name filing is not a trademark, and it won’t stop a competitor from using something similar, or even (subject to tax law etc.) virtually identical. And it doesn’t create a separate legal entity, which means no separate tax treatment, no separate liability, no separate anything.

What happens if you operate under an assumed name without filing? A few things, though they’re candidly modest: among other consequences, a noncompliant business can find itself unable to maintain a lawsuit in Texas courts until it fixes the filing, and knowing violations can carry penalties. The specifics are beyond this article — if you’ve been operating unfiled, ask your lawyer before you panic. More practically, banks will often refuse to open an account in the trade name without the certificate.

Here’s the part of this topic that earns the word “trap,” and the reason for the video’s title.

If you walk into your local county clerk’s office and ask for an assumed name certificate, they will happily take your money and hand you one. What they typically won’t volunteer is that a county-level assumed name certificate is only good for that one county. That’s it — one county. Your Bexar County DBA does nothing for you in Travis County, Harris County, or the other 250 counties in Texas.

Meanwhile, for essentially the same money, you can file your assumed name certificate with the Texas Secretary of State and check a single box that covers every county in the state. The state filing fee is presently $25 (check the SOS fee schedule for the current number if you’re reading this article long after it was written). The county clerk keeps the revenue from filings made at the county, which may explain why nobody behind that counter is rushing to tell you about the statewide option.

Now, an important legal clarification that the comments section on my video keeps asking about, so let’s settle it here. Where you’re supposed to file depends on what kind of business you are:

If you operate through a registered entity (an LLC, corporation, limited partnership, or similar entity on file with the Secretary of State), you generally file your assumed name certificate with the Secretary of State. Since a 2019 change in Texas law, registered entities no longer file assumed name certificates at the county level at all. The old belt-and-suspenders practice of filing both places is obsolete; the SOS filing is the filing. (As always, confirm the current requirements with your lawyer — but that’s the general lay of the land.)

If you’re an unincorporated sole proprietor or general partnership, the rules are different: your assumed name certificate is filed with the county clerk in the counties where you do business, because you don’t have a Secretary of State registration for the certificate to attach to. But the BIGGER answer is that if you’re a sole proprietor, we should probably also have a conversation about whether you want to remain one — forming an LLC is one of the cheapest, easiest insurance policies you can buy. See the suit of armor discussion above.

When you search for the Texas assumed name form, the top results will usually include sponsored links from private filing companies whose websites are dressed up to look vaguely official. They will file the same $25 form for you and charge you $50, $75, or more for the service. Some of them are outright misleading; all of them are unnecessary.

Look at the URL before you click. The form you want lives on the Texas Secretary of State’s website, sos.state.tx.us. If the address says anything else, especially if the result is marked “Sponsored,” keep scrolling. Same goes for county-specific results (Bexar County, Tarrant County, Harris County and so on) if you’re a registered entity filing statewide.

The form is called Form 503, Assumed Name Certificate. The first couple of pages are instructions, and unlike most people, you should actually read them at some point. But here’s the walkthrough.

1. The assumed name. This is the DBA itself, the name you want to operate under. Type it exactly as you intend to use it.

2. The legal name of the entity. This is your entity’s actual legal name, exactly as it appears on your certificate of formation. Not the DBA, not a shortened version. If your LLC is “NewCo Holdings, LLC,” that’s what goes here.

3. Entity type. Check the box for what you are: LLC, for-profit corporation, limited partnership, professional entity, and so on.

4. File number. This is the number the Secretary of State assigned to your entity when it was formed. People regularly get stuck here wondering what a file number is. Go pull out your certificate of formation; the file number is stamped on it. Even if you used a custom certificate of formation instead of the state’s fill-in form, the number is stamped on the copy the SOS returned to you. You can also look it up for free through the Comptroller’s taxable entity search or an SOSDirect search.

5. Jurisdiction of formation. The state (or country) where the entity was originally formed. A Texas LLC types Texas. A Delaware entity that’s registered to do business in Texas types Delaware, because this question asks about original formation, not where you’ve foreign-qualified. Same logic for your Marshall Islands entities, if that’s your thing.

6. Principal office address. Your entity’s principal office. Note that this is not your registered agent’s address; it’s the address you listed as your principal office with the Secretary of State. The two are different. If you forgot, it’s on your certificate of formation (if it has changed, file an amendment!)

7. Duration. How long the assumed name certificate lasts. The statutory maximum is currently ten years, and the certificate is renewable when it expires. Unless you know the DBA is temporary (say, a name for a three-year project), take the ten years. In my experience, 95% of filers just check the maximum-duration box. But if you prefer, you can specify a shorter term of years or a specific end date instead.

8. County or counties where used. This is the payoff for filing at the state level. You can easily check the box for all counties. Boom — the entire state of Texas, for the same money you would have paid for one county.

9. Sign and date. Print it, sign it, date it, and submit it to the Secretary of State with the $25 fee. You can mail it, fax it, or upload and file through SOSDirect online. Done.

Keep the file-stamped copy with your entity records, because your bank will ask for it. Calendar the expiration date; ten years is a long time, and an expired assumed name certificate is an easy thing to forget until it matters. And — critically — if you find yourself layering multiple DBAs over one entity to run what are really separate businesses, stop and talk to a business lawyer, because that structure often means all of those businesses share one liability pool, and there may be a smarter way to organize things.

That’s the whole process. Easy, cheap, and very doable without professional help. Whether a DBA is the right tool for what you’re trying to accomplish — or whether what you actually need is an entity — is a different question, and one worth putting to a business lawyer.