A DBA in Medina County: County Clerk or Secretary of State?

If you're running a one-person shop or a handshake partnership out of Devine, Castroville, or Hondo and want to operate under a name that isn't your own, you file an assumed name certificate, a DBA, with the Medina County Clerk. The clerk hands you two short forms for it: one to register the name, one to abandon it later when you close or rename. The whole thing is a county errand, recorded right there at the Annex on Avenue M.

Incorporated businesses go a different direction. A corporation, an LLC, or a limited partnership files its assumed name with the Texas Secretary of State in Austin, not the county, a rule that's held since House Bill 3609 took effect in 2019. So two neighbors selling tamales under a cute name might file in two completely different places depending on whether they set up an LLC.

Either way, the DBA only registers the name. It doesn't grant a sales-tax permit, a health or food permit, an alcohol license, or any professional credential, and it has nothing to do with whether the city of Hondo lets you operate at that address. The name filing is step one of several, not a finish line.