NY Notary Fees and Penalties, Decoded (Booklet Pt 2)

Two chapters of the notary booklet trip up more test-takers than any other, and they’re the NY notary fees and penalties sections. You’re on the page that lists what a notary may charge, then a few pages later comes the part about crimes and removal, and your brain is trying to hold two completely different kinds of numbers at once. Every test-taker I talk to names these two as the chunks that refuse to stick, so they end up flipping back and forth between a fee schedule written like a tax code and a penalty section written like a rap sheet.

Here’s the good news. These two halves are only hard because nobody puts them side by side. Do that, work the numbers once, and they lock in for good. So that’s what this page is: every fee and every penalty the exam pulls from this chapter, in one place, in plain English.

I’ll flag the exam traps as we go, so you’re not finding them the hard way on test day.

If you want the full path this chapter sits inside, start with how to become a notary in NY. If you already read Pt 1: the definitions, you know the drill. Same method, new chapter.

The quick version, at a glance

What a notary may charge, per act:

• Oath or affirmation: $2
• Taking an acknowledgment or proof of execution: $2 per person
• Swearing a witness to a written instrument: $2
• Protesting non-payment of a note or bill: 75 cents, plus 10 cents per notice, no more than five notices
• Certificate of official character: $5
• Name change: free, no fee
• Electronic notarial act: up to $25 per act
• Paper copy of an electronically notarized document (“papering out”): $2

What it costs to become one: $60 application plus a $15 written exam fee.

The penalty ladder:

• Fraud or deceit in office: misdemeanor, and you can be removed (§135-a)
• Acting as or advertising yourself as a notary before you’re appointed: misdemeanor (§135-a)
• Official misconduct: class A misdemeanor (Penal Law §195.00)
• Issuing a false certificate: class E felony, up to 4 years (Penal Law §175.40)
• A false certificate of acknowledgment, which the law treats as forgery in the second degree: class D felony, up to 7 years (Penal Law §170.10)
• Civil liability: uncapped, for all damages (§135)
• Removal from office: by the Secretary of State, after charges and a hearing (§130)

That’s the whole chapter. Now let’s decode each piece so the numbers mean something instead of just sitting there.

What a notary may charge, per act

The fees a notary can charge come from Executive Law §136, the fee schedule. Translation: this is the state telling you the most you’re allowed to bill for each thing you do. The current cap is $2 for administering an oath or affirmation, and $2 for taking an acknowledgment (confirming the signer signed willingly) or a proof of execution (a witness swearing they saw it signed).

That $2 is where almost everyone gets tripped up, so let’s be exact about it.

The $2 acts, and the stacking trap

It’s easy to read “$2” and stop there, and that’s the trap. The $2 attaches to each act you perform. The statute lets you charge $2 for the first person, $2 for each additional person, and $2 for swearing each witness to a written instrument, so a single document can lawfully run well past $2.

Work it once and you’ll never miss the exam version of this question. Say two people sign an acknowledgment and one witness gets sworn to it. That’s $2 for the first signer, $2 for the second signer, and $2 for the witness. Six dollars, on one document.

What the exam asks: it hands you a scenario with a couple of signers and maybe a witness and wants the total. If your instinct is “the cap is $2, so the answer is $2,” you’ll get it wrong. Count the acts, then multiply.

One more myth to kill while we’re here. The $2 cap sits on each act you perform. It says nothing about how much you can earn in a week. A notary who does dozens of acts a week isn’t capped at $2 for the week, because each act carries its own fee. That matters if you’re eyeing this as a side income, and it’s worth reading the real-world version in the $2 cap explained for real-world work.

Protests: 75 cents and a dime a notice

This one feels ancient, and it is, but the practice exams still drill it. For protesting non-payment of a note or bill, a notary may charge no more than 75 cents, plus 10 cents for each notice given, and no more than five notices.

In plain terms, a protest is the formal notarized record that a payment wasn’t made when it came due. Old commercial-paper machinery, mostly, but it’s on the books.

What the exam asks: the exact figures. Seventy-five cents for the protest, ten cents per notice, five notices max. Memorize the three numbers together and treat them as one card.

The $25 electronic notarial act

Electronic notarization plays by a different fee entirely. An electronic notary may charge up to $25 per electronic notarial act. Two things make this a favorite exam target.

First, “up to” sets a ceiling. You’re allowed to charge less; $25 is just the most you can bill. Second, the cap applies per act even when several acts happen in one online session, so a session with three acts isn’t capped at $25 total.

There’s also a small companion fee. If someone wants a paper copy of a document you notarized electronically, called papering out, you may charge $2 for it.

What the exam asks: the $25 max, and whether you understand it’s per act rather than per session.

The commission and admin fees

Here’s the cleanest way to un-confuse yourself: “fees” in this chapter secretly means two different things. There’s what you charge other people, which we just covered. And there’s what you pay the state to become and stay a notary. Different bucket, different numbers.

The cost to become a notary is a $60 application fee to the Division of Licensing Services, plus a $15 written exam fee. That’s separate from anything you charge once you’re commissioned.

If you want the full breakdown of what commissioning runs you, see what it costs you to get commissioned.

A couple of the odd admin fees show up on practice tests too. A certificate of official character costs $5. A name change costs nothing. It’s a favorite on practice tests precisely because your gut expects a fee.

The penalty ladder, from misdemeanor to felony

Now the half that makes people nervous. The penalties read scary because the language is criminal-code language, but the ladder itself is short, and the exam mostly wants two things from you: which offense is a misdemeanor versus a felony, and the maximum sentences for the felony classes.

Start with the trap, because it’s the whole game. Your gut says a botched or faked notarization must be a felony. The offenses the Executive Law itself names for you are misdemeanors, and the felonies come from the Penal Law, which we’ll get to in a second. A notary who practices fraud or deceit in the exercise of the office is guilty of a misdemeanor and may be removed from office, under §135-a. Acting as a notary, or advertising yourself as one, before you’ve been appointed is also a misdemeanor under §135-a.

Official misconduct sits one notch over. A public servant who, meaning to get or deny some benefit, knowingly skips a duty the law requires of them commits official misconduct, a class A misdemeanor under Penal Law §195.00.

So where do the felonies come in? Two specific acts. Issuing a false certificate is a class E felony, carrying up to 4 years under Penal Law §175.40. And a false certificate of acknowledgment is, in the eyes of the law, forgery in the second degree, a class D felony carrying up to 7 years under Penal Law §170.10. That second one is the connection people miss. When you fake an acknowledgment, the law treats it as forgery and charges it that way. Tie each ceiling to its crime and the whole ladder sticks in your head.

Here are the statute numbers worth carrying in your head, each with its one-line meaning:

• §136 is the fee schedule, the $2 acts.
• §135-a is the criminal side of the notary law: fraud in office and acting without appointment, both misdemeanors.
• §135 is civil liability.
• §130 is removal by the Secretary of State.
• Penal Law §195.00 is official misconduct, a class A misdemeanor.
• Penal Law §175.40 and §170.10 are the felony side: issuing a false certificate (class E) and forgery in the second degree (class D).

That §130 one hides a common miscite. The Secretary of State can suspend or remove a notary for misconduct, but only after the notary is served with a copy of the charges and given a chance to be heard, and that power lives in §130, not §135. If an answer choice pins removal on §135, it’s baiting you.

The one that surprises people: pennies to earn, everything to lose

Here’s the asymmetry nobody points out. You’re capped at $2 for the act. Your exposure if you get it wrong is not capped at anything.

Under §135, a notary who commits misconduct in performing notarial powers “shall be liable to the parties injured for all damages sustained by them.” Read that twice: all damages, with no ceiling on the number at all. A $2 acknowledgment can carry liability many thousands of times the fee if someone gets hurt by a bad one.

And overcharging? People expect a neat little fine for it, and there isn’t one. There’s no separate dollar penalty in the Executive Law for charging too much. Excessive charging gets treated as fraud, which opens you to removal and that uncapped civil liability rather than a fixed fee.

There’s a real New York case that makes the stakes concrete. In In re Roosa, an attorney was censured and ordered to complete six credit hours of ethics CLE after falsely notarizing a client’s signatures on documents that were submitted six days after the client had already died. That’s the whole reason this chapter exists on the exam. The state wants to know you understand that the signature you’re certifying carries real weight.

One more duty that reframes all of this. Since January 25, 2023, every New York notary has to keep a journal of every notarial act, paper and electronic, hold onto it for at least 10 years, and hand it over to the Secretary of State on demand. Penalties aren’t just a one-time courtroom event anymore. There’s an ongoing record you’re responsible for keeping.

A note on the number that’s about to change (but hasn’t)

If you’ve seen “$5” floating around for an oath fee, here’s what’s going on. A 2025 Senate bill, S6268, proposes raising the oath and affirmation fee from $2 to $5. It was referred to the Finance committee on March 7, 2025, and it’s still sitting there. It is not law.

For your exam, the correct answer is $2. Don’t let a well-meaning study group talk you into the pending number.

Drill the high-value numbers first

You don’t need every obscure fee memorized to perfection. You need the high-value ones cold: the $2 stacking math, the $25 electronic cap, the protest figures, and which offenses are misdemeanors versus felonies. Test-takers report the exam runs somewhere around 40 questions with a pass line near 70%, and that it comes in more than one version, but treat those as rough word-of-mouth rather than official specs, because the Department of State publishes neither a fixed question count nor an official passing percentage. Drill the fee figures and the penalty classes until they’re automatic, so it doesn’t matter which version shows up.

If you’re weighing whether the booklet alone is enough to get these to stick, that’s a fair question, and I break it down in do you need more than the booklet to memorize this. When you’re ready for the rest of the chapter, Pt 3: powers and limits is next.

FAQ

How much can a NY notary charge per signature? Two dollars per act. For taking an acknowledgment or proof, that’s $2 per person, and $2 to swear each witness, so a document with two signers and one sworn witness is $6, not $2.

Is a false notarization a felony in New York? Two things are true at once. The offenses the notary law itself names for you, fraud or deceit in office and acting as a notary before appointment, are misdemeanors under §135-a. But faking a certificate crosses into the Penal Law: issuing a false certificate is a class E felony, up to 4 years (§175.40), and a false certificate of acknowledgment is forgery in the second degree, a class D felony, up to 7 years (§170.10).

What’s the penalty for a notary overcharging in NY? There’s no fixed dollar fine in the Executive Law for overcharging. Instead it runs through the fraud provisions, with removal and uncapped civil liability on the table.

How much does it cost to become a notary in NY? A $60 application fee plus a $15 written exam fee, which is separate from any fee you charge once you’re commissioned.

Who can remove a notary, and under what law? The Secretary of State, after the notary is served with the charges and given a chance to be heard, under §130, not §135.

How much can an electronic notary charge? Up to $25 per electronic notarial act. That’s a ceiling, so you can charge less, and it applies per act even if several acts happen in one online session.

---

Fees and penalties are exactly what the exam tests, and they’re exactly the kind of thing that feels solid until a question phrases it sideways. See if you’d get them right: take the free practice test.

Want them drilled until they’re automatic? The course runs the fee table and the penalty ladder until they stick, with lifetime access and free updates.