Montana Corporation Annual Report
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.
What Montana requires
Annual Report
| Frequency | every year |
| Due | April 15 (fee waived if filed by April 15; $35 if filed late) |
| Fee | $0 |
| Form | Annual Report (no form number) |
Montana is one of 41 states on an annual corporate reporting cycle. Nationally, 41 states require an annual corporate report, 7 require one every two years, and 2 require none.
What the filings cost over five years
State filing charges only — incorporation plus five years of reporting, annualized. Corporate income tax and franchise tax are excluded, because both depend on income or net worth.
| Period | State filing charges |
|---|---|
| Incorporation | $35 |
| Each year after (report, annualized) | $0 |
| Five-year equivalent (annualized) | $35 |
That ranks Montana 1st cheapest of 49 states on five-year corporate filing charges.
Montana corporation vs Montana 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 | $35 | $35 |
| Report cadence | Every year | Every year |
| Report fee | $0 | $0 |
Both entities cost $35 to file in Montana, so the filing fee is not a reason to pick one over the other.
Full Montana LLC cost breakdown · LLC vs C-corp explained · LLC vs S-corp explained
State taxes a Montana corporation pays
Corporate income tax
| Applies | Yes |
| Rate | 6.75% standard (7% under water's-edge election; 0.5% alternative rate for qualifying corps with MT gross sales <= $100,000) |
| Minimum tax | $50 |
Franchise or gross-receipts tax
No separate franchise tax. Montana's corporate income tax carries a $50 minimum. LLCs pay no annual franchise/license tax (annual report is free if timely).
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 Montanalevies — 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: Montana Corporate Income Tax Return (Form CIT)
Frequently Asked Questions
Where these numbers come from
This page covers the recurring report a for-profit corporation files with Montana. Every figure was checked against Montana'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. Anything the review could not confirm from an official source is left blank on this page rather than filled with an estimate.
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.