How to Form a Corporation in New Mexico
By Edmond Hui · Facts verified July 29, 2026 against primary state sources
Edmond Hui · Founder, MyStateLLC
Edmond Hui is a software engineer and serial entrepreneur based in New York who has founded multiple online businesses across e-commerce, media, and information publishing. Before transitioning into tech, he spent years as a commercial real estate professional closing deals totaling over 100,000 square feet, giving him firsthand experience with business formation and entity structuring. He built MyStateLLC to provide the free, state-specific LLC guidance he wished existed when forming his own companies.
New Mexico's incorporation fee is not confirmed by an official source
The $100 figure below comes from statute, not from a published New Mexicofee schedule — the state's filing portal could not be read during verification. It is a statutory floor rather than a quoted price. Treat it as indicative and confirm with the state before you budget. For the same reason, New Mexico is excluded from the national rankings and averages used elsewhere on this site.
What you file in New Mexico
Incorporation filing
| Document | Articles of Incorporation (domestic profit corporation) |
| Fee | from $100 |
| Recurring report | Biennial Corporate Report — every two years, $25 |
| First report due | First corporate report due within 30 days of incorporation, then biennially (every 2 years) |
Sourcing note: filed via the NM Secretary of State Enterprise portal, no state-assigned form number
This page covers the state filing and the charges that follow it. For the procedural side — name availability, registered agent, bylaws and the federal EIN — see the formation guide and how to get an EIN, both of which apply to corporations as well as LLCs.
What it costs to incorporate and stay filed
State filing charges only. Corporate income tax and franchise tax are excluded — both depend on income or net worth, so no flat figure would be true for every corporation.
| Charge | Amount | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Articles of Incorporation (domestic profit corporation) | from $100 | One time |
| Biennial Corporate Report | $25 | Every two years |
| First-year state filing charges | $112.50 | — |
| Five-year state filing charges | $162.50 | — |
States that are cheaper to incorporate in
A cheaper filing fee elsewhere rarely saves money if you actually operate in New Mexico. Every state sets its own threshold for what counts as transacting business, and where that threshold is met an out-of-state corporation is generally required to register as a foreign corporation — which would mean fees in both states rather than one. Whether it applies to you depends on facts this page cannot see, so check foreign qualification in New Mexico before incorporating elsewhere to save on the filing fee.
New Mexico corporation vs New Mexico LLC
State filing charges only. Corporate income tax and franchise tax are excluded because both depend on income or net worth, so no flat figure exists for either entity.
| Corporation | LLC | |
|---|---|---|
| Formation filing fee | $100 | $50 |
| Report cadence | Every two years | Not required |
| Report fee | $25 | No report required |
| Entity-level tax on the LLC side | — | Corporate Franchise Tax |
An LLC is $50 cheaper to file here. That is a one-off charge, so it should not decide the entity type on its own.
Full New Mexico LLC cost breakdown · LLC vs C-corp explained · LLC vs S-corp explained
State taxes a New Mexico corporation pays
Corporate income tax
| Applies | Yes |
| Rate | 4.8% of taxable income not over $500,000; over $500,000 = $24,000 plus 5.9% of the excess (top rate 5.9%). Effective for tax years beginning on/after Jan 1, 2020. |
| Minimum tax | $50 |
Franchise or gross-receipts tax
Flat $50 per year (or partial year) corporate franchise tax on every domestic and foreign corporation registered, doing business, or exercising its franchise in NM. Reported on Form CIT-1; S-corporations owe it too; due even if the corporation is immune from income tax under P.L. 86-272.
The $50 minimum tax is deliberately left out of the filing-charge totals on this page. A minimum tax is owed to the state tax authority on a tax return, not to the business filing office — but unlike an income-based tax it is a floor, so treat it as a recurring cost of keeping the corporation alive here.
What these totals leave out: the filing-charge figures on this page are what you pay the business filing office. They exclude corporate income tax and any franchise or gross-receipts tax, because both depend on income, net worth or receipts. The section above sets out what New Mexicolevies — or that it levies neither. Where a state's franchise tax carries a flat minimum, that minimum is an unavoidable annual cost these totals do not include, and over five years it can be the larger number.
C-corp return: CIT-1 (New Mexico Corporate Income and Franchise Tax Return)
Electing S-corporation status in New Mexico
New Mexico follows the federal S election. Full New Mexico S-corporation election guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where these numbers come from
This page covers the state filing required to incorporate in New Mexico and the charges that follow it. Every figure was checked against New Mexico's own published sources on July 29, 2026— the state business filing agency's fee schedule, the governing statute, and where a state tax applies, the state Department of Revenue. Commercial formation-service pages were used as leads only and are never cited. One figure on this page is an exception, and it is flagged at the top: New Mexico's incorporation fee could not be read off an official primary page, so it is shown from statute, labelled as unconfirmed, and excluded from every national ranking and average.
Corporate income tax and franchise tax are quoted as the state publishes them, as rate schedules and thresholds, and are excluded from every dollar total here. They depend on income or net worth, so there is no flat figure that would be true for every corporation. Confidence on New Mexico is low: Corporate income tax rate (4.8%/5.9%), the flat $50 franchise tax, CIT-1, and S-Corp return form are directly confirmed from tax.newmexico.gov pages and FYI-350. New Mexico follows the federal S election (confirmed on the pass-through-entity page). RE-VERIFICATION 2026-07-29: The corporate report is BIENNIAL with a $25 filing fee — confirmed from the official NM SOS site (sos.nm.gov/business-services, which states 'The filing fee for the Biennial Report is $25' with a $200 late penalty). Statute NMSA 1978 s.53-5-2 (biennial corporate reports) supports the biennial frequency and a due date of the 15th day of the 4th month after the taxable year-end, with the initial report within 30 days of incorporation. STILL NOT OFFICIALLY CONFIRMED (hence confidence kept low): the $100 Articles-of-Incorporation formation fee and the exact biennial due date were NOT readable from an official primary page this session — the NM SOS Enterprise portal (enterprise.sos.nm.gov) is a JS-rendered SPA that returns only a shell, nmonesource.com returned 404, and Justia's reproduction of NMSA 53-2-1 (which quotes 'not less than one hundred dollars ($100) or more than one thousand dollars ($1,000)') returned HTTP 403 to both curl and WebFetch, so it corroborates but is a secondary source. The $100 formation fee reflects NMSA 53-2-1 and remains unverified against an official primary page.
Primary sources:
- https://www.tax.newmexico.gov/businesses/corporate-income-franchise-tax-overview/
- https://www.tax.newmexico.gov/businesses/corporate-income-franchise-tax-overview/filing-requirements/
- https://www.tax.newmexico.gov/businesses/corporate-income-franchise-tax-overview/pass-through-entity/
- https://realfile.tax.newmexico.gov/FYI-350.pdf
- https://www.sos.nm.gov/business-services/