The Veteran Waiver Gap

Texas has the broadest waiver. It removes all Secretary of State filing fees, including the $300 certificate of formation, and it waives franchise tax as well, for five years from formation. Your business has to be owned entirely by honorably discharged veterans and formed on or after 1 January 2022.

West Virginia waives the $100 registration fee and the annual report fee for the first four years, which is worth $200 in all. You qualify if veterans, active duty members or their spouses own at least 51 percent.

Michigan waives the $50 articles of organization fee and every other LLC fee, including the annual statement, for as long as veterans hold the majority. At today's fees that is worth $150 over four years.

Pennsylvania waives the $125 certificate of organization and other formation filings, once, at formation. Annual reports are still yours to pay. The waiver covers veteran or reservist owned small businesses with 100 or fewer employees.

Kentucky waives the $40 articles of organization fee and the annual report fee for the first four years, a value of $100. The business must be 51 percent veteran owned, and Kentucky counts people who are currently serving as veterans for this purpose. Your LLC has to be organized after 1 August 2018.

Everywhere else you pay the full fee. Among those 45 states the cheapest formation fee is Montana at $35 and the highest is Massachusetts at $500.

The table below lists every state. The first money column is the fee to form an LLC. The second is the four year cost, which adds the annual or biennial reports a state asks for to that formation fee. In the five waiver states, both columns show what a qualifying veteran pays.

Fee values from StartupOwl state fee table, read 19 October 2026. Waiver states show what a qualifying veteran pays.

Only two states publish a figure. Michigan reported $153,028 waived across 3,910 entities and 4,840 forms in its 2025 fiscal year, in a report dated 15 February 2026.

Pennsylvania reported $451,625 waived across 3,800 accepted filings in calendar 2025, in a report dated 31 March 2026. It also says 4,421 filings were submitted, but that gap is not a count of rejections, so you cannot draw a rate from it.

These two totals cover different periods, one a fiscal year and one a calendar year, so please do not add them together.

Missouri waives LLC formation fees for Missouri residents on active duty or in the Missouri National Guard, and only on paper filings. A veteran is not covered, so Missouri is not one of the five.

Montana's Secretary of State has proposed waiving the $35 LLC fee and the assumed business name fee for veterans and active duty owners. A hearing was set for 14 August 2026, and when I last read the notice on 16 October 2026 the rule had not been adopted, so Montana still charges you.

California does not waive formation fees. Its $800 minimum tax is not owed while an LLC is solely owned by a deployed service member, for tax years 2020 to 2029. That helps deployed members, not veterans forming a company.

The Texas end date is the one people still quote. A 2021 law set the program to end on 1 January 2026, and some service company pages still say so. A 2025 law (HB 346) removed that end date, so the waiver is still available to you.

Several states give disabled veterans relief on business licences or local occupation taxes, Alabama and Georgia among them. Those are licence fees, so I left them out. Bills to create a waiver have died in Florida, Nevada, Maryland, Ohio and Iowa, some of them more than once, and New Jersey, New York and North Carolina have bills pending.

Start with your state's row in the table. If you live in one of the five, check the ownership test first, because it differs. Texas wants every owner to be an honorably discharged veteran, while West Virginia and Kentucky ask for 51 percent and Michigan asks for a majority.

Each waiver is claimed when you file, with proof of veteran status, and the proof you need differs by state. Read your state's filing instructions before you submit, since the claim belongs with the filing itself.

If you live in one of the other 45 states, plan on the full fee and the cost of keeping the LLC in good standing. The four year column shows what that adds up to, and the LLC cost by state guide covers the full fee picture, including costs a waiver would not touch.

If a bill is pending or a rule is proposed in your state, I would not wait for it. Neither is law yet, and you can only plan around a fee that is in force today.

I read each state's fee and veteran provisions at primary sources on 16 October 2026. On 19 October 2026 I rechecked Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, New Hampshire, New Mexico, South Dakota, Tennessee and Arkansas, and none of them has a veteran waiver. Fee values come from StartupOwl's state fee table, on an LLC basis.

A waiver here removes a mandatory payment to a state office for forming or maintaining a business entity. Private discounts, federal SBA fee relief, licence fees, proposed rules and pending bills do not count. A waiver for active duty or Guard members only is not a veteran waiver.

The four year cost counts formation plus annual reports at the state's own cadence. An annual state gets four filings, a biennial state two, and a state with no report none. Among the 45 charging states the median formation fee is $100 and the median four year cost is $265. Massachusetts is highest at $2,500, followed by Tennessee, Nevada and Maryland.

Two judgement calls matter. Texas franchise tax is not turned into dollars, because most new small businesses owe none under the no tax due threshold, so $300 is Texas's comparable figure. Michigan's annual statement fee drops from $25 to $15 after 30 September 2027, and the four year value uses today's fee.