I did not downvote the comment, but I do find it a little silly, so here I go:
1. Assuming your business is going to employ anyone at all, $800 is only 1-2 weeks of pay even at minimum wage.
2. I am not aware of any type of business California has forced to shut down completely (i.e. literally no way of making money) for the entire year.
3. If this business is just a side project you're trying out on top of your main job and it fails, you can disband it within 1 year of creation and are exempt from the fee (Source: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/business/types/limited-liability... - See section "Short form cancellation").
We could argue about whether it discourages starting small business in California, or if the CA government should have waived the fee this year to help with COVID-19; but acting like this is some insane requirement that is killing small businesses is ridiculous. Business that cannot afford this fee are already failing and almost certainly can't even afford to pay their employees. (For the record, I find it to be a pretty regressive tax, and should just be reduced to whatever overhead exists for managing LLC filings.)
I have a property I rent out for $800/mo for 11 months/yr, and wanted to out it in an LLC for liability reasons. At $800/yr, the LLC would be my second largest expense by a large amount, so the confiscatory fee effectively made it impossible to do this.
My only option is to use an out of state LLC, for which California gets less than nothing - not only do they not get my fee, but they get less reporting and regulatory control as well.
For #1, let's not assume the business is employing anyone. Maybe it's one or two partners making no revenue, trying to develop some software on the side. I did this for a few years in CA, and the $800 was my biggest yearly expense. Flushed it down the CA toilet, just to exist.
Whoever downvoted the comment (at the time of me writing this) above - can you add a comment why? This seems like a reasonable comment.
I see more and more reasonable comments simply being downvoted, with no reasons or counter-point provided, which is not helpful.