The petition fee, any fraud-prevention and detection fee and optional premium processing under the current fee schedule, plus L-2 filings, legal preparation, translations if any records are in French and the cost of assembling years of corporate records.
The record-gathering is the real expense
Hypothetical example: a Rothesay freight company budgets only the government fee and discovers that assembling the evidence takes weeks of bookkeeper and manager time. The USCIS fees for Form I-129 and its supplements are set by Form G-1055 and should be checked on the day of filing. The larger cost is usually preparation: pulling three years of payroll for the transferee, corporate filings for both entities, financial statements, customer contracts and the organization charts, and having them reviewed.
Premium processing is a business decision tied to the subsidiary's need for a manager on site. Certified translations are required for any French-language records submitted to USCIS. The company should also plan for the L-2 applications for the spouse and child and, if the petition is approved, an eventual extension filing before the initial validity period ends.
Treating the petition as a project with a budget avoids the surprise.