How to Move an LLC to Another State in 2026

What You Are Actually Choosing Between

There are 4 ways to move an LLC across state lines. Only one keeps the company alive. The other three cost you something.

Domestication is the good one. Your LLC stops being a Delaware LLC and becomes a Texas LLC. Same company throughout. The EIN survives. The bank account survives. The formation date survives, which matters more than people expect. Maine says so in statute, the LLC's existence "is deemed to have commenced on the date the converting organization commenced its existence" in the state it came from. Nevada, Rhode Island, Iowa, Illinois, Hawaii and Wyoming say the same thing.

Foreign qualification is the second route. You keep the original LLC and register it in the new state as well. Now you file and pay in both. 2 annual reports, 2 registered agents, 2 sets of fees, for as long as you trade. It is right when you truly operate in both states. It is wrong when you have simply moved house, and it is what most people drift into by accident. Our guide to foreign LLC registration covers that filing.

Dissolve and re-form is the crude one. Close the old LLC, open a new one. It works everywhere, including the 8 states with no domestication statute. It also kills the formation date and forces a new EIN in most cases. Then you move every contract, licence and bank account to a company your customers have never heard of. Your credit file starts at zero. Our guide to dissolving an LLC covers the closing side.

Merger is the specialist route. You form a new LLC in the destination state and merge the old one into it. Lawyers in Kentucky and Massachusetts use it because their states leave no choice. It saves more than dissolution does. It is also more paperwork and usually needs a lawyer.

What It Actually Costs

The filing fee is the number everyone quotes and it is the smallest part. Utah charges $17 to domesticate. Texas charges $600. That is a thirty five fold spread on the same transaction.

Utah at $17, Indiana at $20 online, Vermont at $20 and Nebraska at $30 sit at the cheap end. Texas at $600, Nevada at $350 before its charter fee, Tennessee at $320 minimum and Arkansas at $300 sit at the top. Rhode Island charges $0 for the conversion certificate itself. The articles still cost $150.

Watch for the second fee. In most states the domestication filing must arrive with the new LLC's formation document. That paper has its own price. Illinois is $100 for the statement and $150 for the articles, so $250 all in. Delaware is $200 plus $90. Texas is $300 plus $300. Only Iowa, Idaho, Utah, Mississippi and Nebraska look like true single fee filings.

Compare the routes before you decide. Foreign qualification into Texas costs $750 and leaves you paying 2 states. Domestication into Texas costs $600 once. North Carolina runs the other way, $125 to domesticate against $250 to foreign qualify. Run your own 2 states. Do not assume.

Do not move your LLC just for the taxes

This belief costs founders more than any other. Here it is plainly. Forming an LLC in a low tax state does not move your tax bill. It moves your paperwork.

States tax you on where you do business, not on where a certificate was filed. Live in California and run the company from a California kitchen table, and California treats that as doing business in California. Your Wyoming LLC must then also register in California, file a California return, and pay the California franchise tax of $800. You now pay 2 states. You gained a second annual report.

The exception is the locationless business. If you have no office, no staff, no stock and no property in any state, and you have moved yourself, your LLC's home really can follow you. The test is still where the work happens. For a solo online business that is where you sit. Moving yourself matters more than moving the paperwork. A Florida resident running a software business from Florida is a Florida business. Keep a New York flat and a New York client base and New York will see it differently.

None of this is tax advice. The line is fuzzy at the edges, and multi state income, remote employees and property all move it. Ask a CPA who works in both states before you file anything, because the $600 filing is the easy part and the return is not.

Which States Allow LLC Domestication

42 states allow it. 8 do not. That is the answer nobody publishes, so here it is with the filing name and fee for each one, read at the state filing agency on 26 July 2026.

The 8 closed states are Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, South Carolina and West Virginia. In each one the statute reaches corporations or partnerships but stops short of LLCs. New York surprises people. NY LLC Law section 1006 allows a conversion into an LLC only for a domestic partnership, so an out of state LLC has nothing to file.

Montana only joined in 2025. Chapter 317 of the 2025 laws added a domestication part to its LLC Act. Older pages still list Montana as closed. Check the date on anything else you read.

Now the trap that costs the most time. Only about a third of these states use the word domestication. California, Texas, Florida, Delaware, Ohio, Michigan, Washington and a dozen more file the same move under conversion. Search a California forms page for domestication and you find nothing. You then decide California will not let you. It will. The form is Articles of Organization Conversion, LLC-1A, and it costs $70.

Two states use both words and mean different things. Florida has an Articles of Domestication form, but statute 605.1051 limits it to companies from outside the United States. An LLC from another US state files Articles of Conversion. Wisconsin does the same in reverse. File the wrong one and it bounces.

The reciprocity trap nobody warns you about

Most states that allow domestication require your current state to allow it too. We confirmed that condition in 13 statutes. Arkansas, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota and Ohio all carry it.

Read that twice if your LLC sits in one of the 8 closed states. Your home state authorises nothing. A destination that demands home state authorisation may refuse you even though its own door is open, so a New York LLC cannot always domesticate into Ohio just because Ohio permits it.

This is not a reason to panic. Call the destination state's business division before you pay anyone. Ask one question, will you accept a domestication from a state whose statute is silent. The answer takes 5 minutes and decides your route.

Common Mistakes That Cost Real Money

Filing the domestication and forgetting to close the old state. The old LLC lives on. It keeps owing annual reports and racking up penalties until someone notices. Most states want a withdrawal or dissolution filed afterwards, and Wyoming's continuance route asks you to send proof back.

Assuming the deadline is generous. Maryland runs 6 to 8 weeks on paper and cannot be filed online at all. Count on 2 weeks there and you have a problem. Expedited is $300 and rush is $1,050.

Letting the registered agent lapse mid move. There is a window where the old agent has quit and the new one is not on file yet. Service of process in that gap still counts against you.

Moving the LLC while the business stays put. Operations, staff and customers left in the old state mean you added a state. You did not move one.

Trusting a page nobody has updated. Montana changed in 2025. Utah renumbers its domestication statute on 1 October 2026, and Louisiana raises filing fees the same day. This area moves. If you are weighing the destination itself, our LLC formation service comparison and the state guides behind it carry the current fees.