HARRISBURG — Business owners trying to register new companies in Pennsylvania faced unusually long waits this winter, after the state switched to a new online filing system and created a backlog of thousands of applications that took months to resolve.
Sukari Fuller-Bey submitted the paperwork to register a new company in early November, hoping to have it done by the end of the year.By early December, wait times had increased to about six weeks and employees were working mandatory overtime to catch up, according to a Department of State memo. The same month, an attorney for the department acknowledged in an email shared with Spotlight PA that processing times were “terrible” but the agency was “doing what it can to dig out.
Business owners typically have the option to pay a $100 fee for an expedited, same-day filing. But by February, the backlog was so bad that the Department of State restricted these fast-tracked filings to two days a week. Before the change, the wait time for filing to register a new company was typically between one and two weeks, Lathia said. More recently, wait times have dropped to less than four weeks, in line with the average over the past fiscal year.
Staffing shortages — a problem many state agencies are facing — also contributed to the delays. The bureau that handles corporate filings has a 20% vacancy rate, Gulli said.