What is compared
The rows are the same for every jurisdiction: the name of the formation document and its filing fee, the periodic report with how often it is filed, the report fee, when the report is due, the annual tax and when it is due, whether formation must be published, the filing office, and the latest date a page was read. There are 51 jurisdictions to pick from, which is every one that has been read so far.
The picker holds at most four, because a fifth column does not fit a phone or a printed page. Remove one to add another. Where a cell says not read, no official page stating that value was read, so the cell cannot be compared with a number: it is not a zero. Where the annual tax says "By rule", the amount depends on something about the company, such as its income or the number of its owners, and the rule is printed in the cell.
What a comparison cannot tell you
The cheapest filing fee is not the cheapest place to run a company. A company formed in one state and doing business in another usually has to register in the second state as well, and pay there too. That is a question for the states' own pages and for a professional. The rankings put every jurisdiction in order on one measure at a time, and the due dates page sets the report dates out by month.
