Five states, five different kinds of annual charge, and the one column that made them look comparable

The first draft of this file had one column headed annual cost and a dollar figure in each row. I was wrong to build it that way, and it would have been bad advice dressed as a table, because the five figures in that column were five different kinds of charge. One was a tax you owe for existing, one was a report fee, one was a license tax that grows with your assets, one was a tax that grows with your income, and one was a filing fee that sits next to a newspaper bill nobody in government prints.

So this is the question of how much does an llc cost per year by state answered for 5 states, each read from its own filing office on 16 September 2026, with the kind of charge written next to the number. I checked Delaware, California, Wyoming, Florida and New York, the five our readers ask about most. Nothing below says anything about the other forty-five, and I would rather print five verified rows than fifty inherited ones. When the company is ready to bank, the US bank list in Bank Index says who supervises each one.

I went looking for each page in turn, which took most of an afternoon, mostly because state filing offices do not agree on where a fee belongs. One puts it on a tax page, another on a form page, a third inside a footnote to a schedule that is mainly about something else. The work is not hard. It is scattered, and scattered information is exactly the kind that gets copied from an older table instead of being read again.

Delaware: 400 dollars, no report, no proration

Delaware has its own file here, File 001, which covers House Bill 400 of 21 May 2026 and the state pages that still disagree about the old and new amount, so this section only records what the Division of Corporations page says today and does not repeat that story.

The Division of Corporations puts it in one line: all domestic and foreign limited liability companies “are required to pay an annual tax of $400.00”. The same page adds that “There is no requirement to file an Annual Report”, which is the one thing Delaware makes genuinely easy.

The tax for the prior year is due on or before 1 June. Missing it costs “a penalty of $200.00 plus 1.5% interest per month on tax and penalty”, so a company that forgets for a year turns 400 dollars into something close to 800 before anybody notices.

Then the sentence that catches people who form in December. “There is no proration on alternative entity taxes.” The tax is assessed if the entity is active in the records “anytime during January 1st through December 31st” of the tax year, so an LLC formed on 30 December owes the full 400 for that year, and I have watched two founders discover that the following June.

My instinct is that this rule causes more irritation than any fee on the page, because it feels unfair in a way a flat charge does not. It is not hidden, though. It is one plain sentence, and the only defence against it is choosing the formation date with the calendar open.

California: 800 dollars, and the free first year is over

The Franchise Tax Board is blunt: “Every LLC that is doing business or organized in California must pay an annual tax of $800.” Doing business is the phrase that matters, because a Delaware LLC run from a flat in San Francisco is doing business in California and owes both states, which puts the floor at 1,200 dollars a year before anything else is counted.

The first payment is due by the 15th day of the 4th month after you register with the Secretary of State. Form a company on 18 June and the tax is due on 15 September.

The part I had wrong for longest is the first year. Plenty of guides still say California waives the 800 dollars for a new LLC. The FTB page says the exception applied “For tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2021, and before January 1, 2024”. That exception has now expired. A company formed in 2026 pays in its first year, and the only way out the page offers is cancelling within a year using the short form cancellation.

On top of the annual tax sits the LLC fee, which starts once income passes 250,000 dollars and is estimated and paid by the 15th day of the 6th month. The bands are 900 dollars from 250,000 to 499,999, then 2,500 up to 999,999, then 6,000 up to 4,999,999, and 11,790 dollars at 5 million or more.

Wyoming: 60 dollars, or a share of assets

Wyoming’s fee schedule charges 100 dollars for the articles of organization. The annual cost is the license tax that comes with the annual report, and the footnote defines it as “$60 or two-tenths of one mill on the dollar ($.0002) whichever is greater based on the company’s assets located and employed in the state of Wyoming.”

At 0.0002 the asset measure only overtakes 60 dollars once Wyoming assets pass 300,000 dollars, which is my arithmetic from the footnote. A holding LLC with nothing located in the state pays the minimum, and that is most of the reason Wyoming turns up in every cheapest state list I have ever read.

The schedule also shows what lapsing costs. Reinstatement after a tax lapse is 100 dollars. Reinstatement for having no registered agent is 350, which is more than 5 years of the minimum license tax.

Florida: cheap until 2 May

The Florida fee table lists the annual report, including the supplemental fee, at 138.75 dollars. The next row lists the same report “Received after May 1” at 538.75.

The annual report page explains the gap: a 400 dollar late fee “will be imposed on all profit corporations, limited liability companies, limited partnerships and limited liability limited partnerships”, while non-profit corporations are exempt. So the real price of a Florida LLC is 138.75 dollars and a calendar reminder, and the calendar reminder is worth 400. That reminder is the whole strategy. I find it hard to think of a cheaper fix anywhere in company admin.

New York: the cost the state does not print

Nobody warns you about this part. New York is the state where the headline fee tells you the least. Section 206 of the Limited Liability Company Law requires most new LLCs to publish the articles or a formation notice “in two newspapers for six consecutive weeks”, in papers designated by the county clerk where the LLC’s office is.

The publisher gives you an affidavit, the affidavits go to the Department of State with a Certificate of Publication, and that filing carries “a $50 filing fee”. The deadline is 120 days from formation, and the consequence of missing it is “the suspension of the LLC’s authority to carry on, conduct or transact business”.

What the state does not print is the newspaper bill, and that omission matters more than it looks, because a founder comparing states from fee pages alone will see a small filing charge for New York and conclude it sits near the cheap end of the list, when the largest single cost of forming there is a private invoice from two newspapers that no state table carries. The page says only that the newspapers charge a fee, and it varies by county. I cannot tell you the number for your county, and any figure I gave would be a quote I had not seen.

Three hidden costs that sit outside every table

None of these are hidden on purpose. The first hidden cost is the second state, and it is the largest of the three by a distance. An LLC formed in Delaware or Wyoming and run from California pays California’s 800 dollars as well, so the cheap state becomes an extra state rather than a cheaper one.

The second hidden cost is lateness, and it is the one I see paid most often. Delaware adds 200 dollars plus 1.5 per cent a month, Florida adds 400 on 2 May, and New York suspends the right to trade at day 121. None of those shows up in a fee column.

The third is the registered agent. Every state here expects one, the fee is set by private companies rather than by the state, and I have not found a public schedule worth quoting, so it sits in this list as a line without a number.

How I would actually choose

I would stop choosing a state by its fee. The fee differences between these five are real but small next to the question of where the company actually operates, and a founder who forms somewhere cheap and then works from somewhere expensive pays both. I suspect most of the cheapest state lists are built for people who will never run the company from anywhere at all, which is a real audience but probably not yours.

If the company will operate in one state, form there unless there is a specific legal reason not to, and treat that state’s recurring charge as a fixed cost of doing business. If it will operate across several, the formation state matters less than the list of states where you will have to register anyway, and that list is a conversation with an accountant rather than a table.

Whichever way it goes, put every deadline from this piece into a shared calendar on the day the company is formed. The fees themselves are predictable, and the penalties exist because people are not.

Questions we get

These arrive most weeks, usually from somebody comparing states in a spreadsheet late at night. I recognise the spreadsheet, because I built one like it myself.

Where can I see the annual report fee by state? On each state’s own filing page, and nowhere else I would trust. The 5 rows here were taken from those pages on 16 September 2026: Delaware 400 with no report, Florida 138.75 by 1 May, Wyoming 60 or the asset measure, California 800 as a tax rather than a report fee, New York 50 for the publication certificate.

How does a franchise tax comparison change the choice of state? Less than the tables suggest, because the charge that dominates is usually where you do business rather than where you formed. A California based founder pays 800 dollars to California whichever state issued the articles, and I would start the comparison from that fact.

What are the hidden llc costs people miss? A second state’s tax, late penalties, New York newspaper publication and a registered agent. Only the last has no official number, and the late penalties are the ones I see paid most often.

Is the delaware llc annual tax still 300 dollars? Not any more. File 001 covers the bill that changed it and the pages that still show the old figure. The Division of Corporations page read on 16 September 2026 says 400, due by 1 June, with no proration and a 200 dollar penalty plus 1.5 per cent a month for late payment.

Is the california llc 800 tax first year still waived? Not for a company formed now. The waiver covered tax years beginning from 1 January 2021 and before 1 January 2024. My guess is that most of the pages still repeating it were written in that window and never updated, which is a guess about other people’s pages rather than a fact about the tax.

A short digression about old tables

Fee tables age quietly. A table can be two years old and look current because nobody has complained, and that is the entire failure mode of fee tables everywhere. I still find it uncomfortable how often the only reason a table gets rebuilt is that somebody happened to notice one wrong number. Anyway, back to the states.

What is not settled here

The other 45 states. I did not check them for this piece, and I am not going to extrapolate from five.

The New York newspaper cost by county. The state names the requirement and the 50 dollar filing fee and leaves the publication price to the papers.

The New York biennial statement fee. The state page did not load when I tried it, so that number stays out rather than coming from memory, which is exactly how fee tables go stale in the first place.