Filing a DBA in Tom Green County Costs $23 and Lasts Ten Years

Say you start mowing lawns around San Angelo as "Concho Valley Lawn Care" but you're a sole proprietor, not a company. Because that name isn't your own legal name, Texas wants it on the public record, and the place to put it is the County Clerk at 124 W. Beauregard. The filing, an assumed-name certificate, what everybody calls a DBA, runs $23, plus fifty cents for each extra signature if there's more than one owner.

It's not a corporation, LLC, or registered limited partnership filing. Those entities register their names with the state instead. A DBA is the route for an individual or general partnership doing business under a made-up name.

The certificate is good for ten years from the day you file, unless you write a shorter term into it yourself. Mark your own calendar, though: the clerk takes no responsibility for reminding you when it lapses, so a decade out it's on you to refile. And a DBA is only a name record. It doesn't stand in for a sales-tax permit, a food permit, or any professional license your actual line of work might need. It just makes the name official.