Filing a DBA in Polk County: Who Still Goes to the Clerk

Say you mow lawns or do handyman work around Livingston under a catchy name instead of your own. That name is an assumed name, a DBA, and Texas wants a public record of who's actually behind it. For individuals and general partnerships, that record gets filed with the Polk County Clerk.

The certificate has to be notarized or acknowledged before the Clerk will file it, and if you've got partners, every one of them signs in front of the notary, not after. You don't have to hunt down a notary yourself; a deputy in the Clerk's office will acknowledge it for a dollar while you're there.

Here's the line that changed: since September 1, 2019, the Polk County Clerk no longer records assumed names for corporations, LLCs, or limited partnerships. If your business is incorporated, that filing goes to the Texas Secretary of State only, and you skip the county step entirely. A sole shop still files locally; an LLC files in Austin.