Short answer
Privacy on the Texas Public Information Report is a per-field question. Form 05-102 carries five separate address fields, and a registered agent service replaces your address in one of them, the registered office line. The other four are separate fields with separate rules, including the mailing address the form asks for next to each person named in Section A. We looked up fifty Texas LLC records to see what those person rows show.
Key takeaways
- Form 05-102 has five address fields, not one. The taxpayer mailing address, the principal office, the principal place of business, a mailing address for each person listed in Section A, and the registered office line in the agent block printed below the Section C table. A registered agent service fills the last of those.
- Section A asks for people by name. The form's own caption reads Name, title and mailing address of each officer, director, member, general partner or manager, and the 2026 instructions add that Texas limited liability companies must list all managers and, if the company is member-managed, list all members.
- In fifty Texas LLC records we looked up on August 6, 2026, every person listed carried an address. There were 84 person rows across 45 of the 50 entities, and 84 of the 84 had a street or PO box address attached. The lookup is free, needs no login, and returns the data as JSON.
- The registered agent does not usually reach Section A. Of those 84 person rows, 31 shared an address with the registered office, and in only 2 of them did the agent name match a company-name pattern. In the remaining 29 the agent's name was a personal name rather than a company name, which is consistent with owners serving as their own agent at their own address.
- Changes to the agent do not go on this form. The instructions state that changes to the registered agent or registered office must be filed directly with the Secretary of State, and cannot be made on this form. That is a separate filing with a separate office.
Before you start
- Look up your own LLC first at the Comptroller's franchise tax account status search. It is free and it shows what that lookup publishes about your company today.
- Have your certificate of formation open as well, because part of what is public was filed there years before any franchise tax report existed.
- Know which report you file. A Texas LLC files the Public Information Report, Form 05-102. The Ownership Information Report, Form 05-167, is for other entity types.
- This article describes what Texas asks for and what the state publishes. It does not tell you what to put in any field. Where a rule sets a limit, the limit is quoted rather than summarized.
Who this is for
- Texas LLC owners who pay for a registered agent expecting it to keep a home address out of public records.
- Single-member LLC owners running the company from home who have not yet filed their first report.
- Anyone who looked up another Texas company and was surprised by how much of it was readable.
- Owners comparing what the Secretary of State holds against what the Comptroller publishes.
One Report, Five Address Fields
The complaint usually arrives in the same shape. Someone forms a Texas LLC, runs it from home, pays a registered agent so the home address stays off the filings, and then opens another company's Public Information Report and finds names and addresses sitting in plain view. If the agent was supposed to prevent that, something looks broken.
Nothing is broken. The report asks for addresses in five different places and the agent answers one of them. Treating privacy here as a single yes or no is what makes the result feel like a surprise, because the question has five answers and they are not the same answer.
Below is the full address inventory of Form 05-102, taken from the form itself.
| Field on the form | What it asks for | Filled by a registered agent service |
|---|---|---|
| Taxpayer mailing address | The entity's mailing address, with a circle to blacken if it has changed | No |
| Principal office | A separate field, named in the statute at Section 171.203(a)(5) | No |
| Principal place of business | A separate field again, listed next to the principal office | No |
| Section A, per person | A mailing address for each officer, director, member, general partner or manager, with city, state and ZIP | No |
| Registered agent and registered office block | The registered agent and registered office currently on file, printed below the Section C table | Yes, this is the field the service replaces |
Every address field on Texas Form 05-102, and what a registered agent service reaches
The form says out loud what happens to it
The footer of Form 05-102 states that the information on the form is required by Section 171.203 of the Tax Code, and that the information will be available for public inspection. Publication is the stated purpose of the report.
Which Report a Texas LLC Files
There are two reports and they are easy to mix up, so it is worth settling before anything else. Form 05-102 is the Public Information Report. Its header reads that it is to be filed by Corporations, Limited Liability Companies (LLC), Limited Partnerships (LP), Professional Associations (PA) and Financial Institutions.
Form 05-167 is the Ownership Information Report, and its header reads that it is to be filed by Entities other than Corporations, Limited Liability Companies, Limited Partnerships, Professional Associations or Financial Institutions. The word other sets the boundary in that sentence. A Texas LLC files the Public Information Report and does not file the Ownership Information Report.
Something did change recently, and it is narrower than it is often described. The Comptroller's 2026 forms page states that the No Tax Due Report is not available for 2026 reports, that effective for reports due on or after January 1, 2024, an entity with annualized total revenue at or below the no-tax-due threshold is not required to file a No Tax Due Report, and that the entity is still required to file a Public Information Report (PIR) or an Ownership Information Report (OIR). The enrolling act is Senate Bill 3 from the second called session of the 88th Legislature in 2023, which raised the exemption amount and states that the changes apply only to a report originally due on or after January 1, 2024.
What did not change is the existence of the two reports. Form 05-167 appears on the Comptroller's 2023 report year forms page alongside the No Tax Due Report it outlived. The split between the two forms is older than the 2024 filing change, and a guide that describes the Ownership Information Report as a 2024 invention is describing something else.
| Form 05-102 | Form 05-167 | |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Public Information Report | Ownership Information Report |
| Who files it | Corporations, LLCs, LPs, professional associations, financial institutions | Entities other than those |
| A Texas LLC | Files this one | Does not file this one |
| Still required below the tax threshold | Yes | Yes |
The two Texas franchise tax information reports
Owing no tax does not mean filing nothing
Section 171.203(a) says the report is due regardless of whether the entity is required to pay any tax. The no-tax-due threshold sits at 2.65 million dollars for 2026 reports and was 2.47 million dollars for 2024 and 2025, because Section 171.006(b) re-indexes it on January 1 of each even numbered year. The threshold decides the tax. The report is due either way, unless the entity is one of the two classes the 2026 forms page carves out, which the questions at the end cover.
What Fifty Texas LLC Records Show
The question of what stays visible is answerable, because Texas publishes the answer. The Comptroller's franchise tax account status search is free, needs no login, and the page behind it returns its data as JSON, including an array of the people the state lists for that entity, with their titles and addresses.
On August 6, 2026 we drew a sample of fifty active Texas LLCs from the state's own open data file of active franchise taxpayers, then looked each taxpayer number up on the Comptroller's account status page. The fifty came from a 1,200-record window of that file rather than from the file end to end, so this is a sample of active Texas LLCs and not a census. Both sources are open to the public and neither needs a login. Names and addresses of real filers stayed on our machine and are not part of what we published. We compared addresses as exact strings after normalizing case and punctuation, so our count of shared addresses is a floor and our count of differences is a ceiling.
The headline number is the one that answers the original complaint. Every person the state listed in those fifty records had an address next to their name.
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Entities sampled and resolved | 50 of 50 |
| Entities returning person rows | 45 of 50 |
| Person rows in total | 84 |
| Person rows carrying a street or PO box address | 84 of 84 |
| Entities with a registered agent named | 50 of 50 |
| Person rows sharing the registered office address | 31 of 84 |
| Those 31, where the agent name matched a company-name pattern | 2 |
| Person rows at companies whose agent name matched a company-name pattern | 13 of 84 |
| Those 13, carrying an address other than the registered office address | 11 |
Fifty active Texas LLCs drawn at random from a 1,200-record window of the state's open data file, looked up on August 6, 2026
The number we had to decompose
The first reading of that sample was that 31 of 84 person rows already sit at the registered office address, which would suggest the agent's address carries into Section A. Splitting the 31 by who the agent was removed that reading. In 29 of them the agent's name was a personal name rather than a company name, which is consistent with an owner acting as their own agent. Only 2 involved an agent name that matched the company-name patterns we tested for. The convenient reading of that number did not hold once we split it.
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Section A Asks for People
The reason the agent's address does not solve Section A is that Section A is not asking about the company. Its caption reads Name, title and mailing address of each officer, director, member, general partner or manager, and above it the form instructs the filer to report officer, director, member, general partner and manager information as of the date the report is completed.
For an LLC the Comptroller's 2026 instructions are more specific still. They state that Texas limited liability companies must list all managers and, if the company is member-managed, list all members, and that all officers, if any, must be listed. A single-member LLC with no manager therefore lists its single member, which is the owner asking the question.
Our sample shows what that produces in practice. Across the 84 person rows the most common single label was DIRECTOR at 26, the member labels came to 17, and the manager and managing member labels together came to 27. Director is an unusual label for an LLC, and it is there because one form serves corporations and LLCs at once. The requirement is the same when the entity is a one-person company.
The field is labeled mailing address. We read the statute, the form and the 33-page instruction booklet and did not find a rule in any of them requiring that address to be a residence, and we did not find the kind of PO box prohibition that appears on the registered office field. An absence of a prohibition is not the same thing as permission, so the honest description is that we looked in those three documents and did not find a rule, not that any address will do.
Section 171.203 Names Officers and Directors. The Form Names More
There is a gap here worth seeing, because it explains why this requirement is hard to look up.
Section 171.203(a)(3) of the Tax Code requires the name, title, and mailing address of each person who is an officer or director of the corporation, limited liability company, or professional association on the date the report is filed and the expiration date of each person's term as an officer or director, if any, and a general partner of the limited partnership on the date the report is filed.
The words member and manager do not appear in that paragraph. They appear on the form and in the instructions. Manager also appears in the initial report provision at Section 171.201, which names each officer, director, and manager but not members, while the annual report provision at Section 171.202 names only officers and directors. The form footer meanwhile states that the information on the form is required by Section 171.203 of the Tax Code.
That is an observation about where the requirement is written, not a claim that anyone exceeded their authority. The practical effect for an owner is the part that matters. Reading the statute alone will not tell a member-managed LLC that it has to name its members, because that instruction lives in the Comptroller's document rather than in the section the form cites.
The Copy You Certify That You Mailed
The report carries an obligation that is easy to miss, and it is one more place an address is required.
Section 171.203(d) states that the entity shall send a copy of the report to each person named in the report under Subsection (a)(3) who is not currently employed by the entity or a related entity, and that an authorized person must sign the report under a certification that the information is true and correct and that a copy of the report has been mailed to each person identified in that subsection on the date the return is filed. Section 171.203(f) adds that a report filed electronically complies with the signature and certification requirements.
The signature block on Form 05-102 repeats it in the filer's own voice, declaring that a copy of the report has been mailed to each person named in the report who is an officer, director, member, general partner or manager and who is not currently employed by the entity or a related one.
For a solo owner this duty rarely applies, since it only reaches people who are not employed by the company or a related entity, and on a solo report there is nobody else. It matters when the report names someone who has left, or a family member added as a manager, or an outside officer. Those people are entitled to receive the document that publishes their address.
Where a Registered Agent Change Goes
An owner who reads all of this and decides to change the agent will find that the report is not where that change is filed.
The 2026 instructions state that changes to the registered agent or registered office must be filed directly with the Secretary of State, and cannot be made on this form, and that the changes can be made online or on forms downloaded from the Secretary of State website. Form 05-102 repeats it inside the agent block itself, telling the filer that a filing with the Secretary of State is required to change registered agent, registered office or general partner information.
The instrument is the Secretary of State's Form 401, Statement of Change of Registered Office/Agent. Its registered office field is labeled Street Address (No P.O. Box). The fee line on the form we retrieved refers to instructions that were not part of the document, so we are not quoting a dollar figure for it.
This is the two-office structure that produces most of the confusion. The Secretary of State holds the formation record and the agent designation. The Comptroller collects the franchise tax report and, under Section 171.203(c), forwards the information to the Secretary of State. Updating one of them is not updating the other, and neither of them is a place to correct the other's copy. Sorted by which office handles it, the changes look like this.
- Registered agent or registered office: Secretary of State, Form 401. Not the Public Information Report.
- Officers, directors, members and managers listed in Section A: the Public Information Report, as of the date it is filed.
- Principal office and principal place of business: the Public Information Report, in their own fields.
- The address the state mails franchise tax correspondence to: set on the certificate of formation at the start, then carried by the taxpayer mailing address field.
The Name Was Public Before the Report Existed
There is one more layer under all of this, and for a member-managed LLC it arrives earlier than the first franchise tax report.
The Secretary of State's certificate of formation, Form 205, has an article for the governing authority. It instructs the filer to select and complete either A or B and to provide the name and address of each initial governing person. Option A is for a company that initially has managers, and asks for the name and address of each initial manager. Option B reads that the limited liability company does not initially have managers, and that the name and address of each initial member are set forth below.
So for a member-managed Texas LLC, the owner's name and an address were filed on a public document on day one. The Public Information Report is not what made the owner visible. It is what keeps the listing current each year, and it adds a second copy of the information from a second agency.
The lookup returns each person row with a source tag. In our sample 47 were tagged CPA against 37 tagged SOS. We did not find documentation of those tags on the Comptroller pages we read, so we are reporting the split rather than naming what produced it.
What a Mailbox Address Cannot Do in Texas
This is the limit that decides whether any of the above changes an owner's options, and it needs to be stated plainly rather than left to the end of a sales page.
The Texas Secretary of State's guidance on registered agents states that a registered office cannot be a post office box that is part of a commercial mail or message service unless that commercial enterprise is the registered agent. A mail service address is therefore not a Texas registered office unless the mail service itself is the agent of record. save office does not offer registered agent service in any state, and does not have a Texas address to offer, so the registered office field is not one we can fill for anyone.
That leaves the honest version of the answer. A commercial registered agent solves the registered office field and solves it well, because that is the field it exists for. It does not reach Section A, the principal office, the principal place of business, or the taxpayer mailing address. Our sample shows that for Section A. The lookup also publishes the taxpayer mailing address and the registered agent and office, and in the responses we read it did not return the principal office or the principal place of business, so those two sit outside what we measured. Deciding what goes in those other fields is a separate decision, made against the rules that govern each one.
The value in reading the form this closely is not that it produces a trick. It is that the report stops being a single wall of exposure and becomes four fields you can reason about and one that is already handled.
What the vendor promises, and what its own report page says
One Texas registered agent service tells visitors that its address appears on Secretary of State filings instead of a home address, and that this keeps personal information off public databases. A separate page on the same site, describing what the Public Information Report contains, lists the names and addresses of officers, directors, members, or managers. Both sentences are on the site of the same company. The promise is written about Secretary of State filings, and the Public Information Report is a Comptroller filing, which is where the names and addresses in that same site's own description sit. The narrow promise is accurate for the field the service fills. The broader one is not supported by the page next to it.
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