Ohio Corporation Annual Report: Not Required
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 Ohio requires
Ohio does not require for-profit corporations to file a recurring report with the state business filing agency. Ohio does not require for-profit corporations to file annual or periodic reports with the Secretary of State
Ohio is one of only 2 states — with Oklahoma — that require no recurring corporation report with the business filing agency at all. That removes a filing, not a tax obligation: any state tax return the corporation owes is separate and still due.
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 | from $99 |
| Each year after (report, annualized) | $0 |
| Five-year equivalent (annualized) | $99 |
That ranks Ohio 3rd cheapest of 49 states on five-year corporate filing charges.
Ohio corporation vs Ohio 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 | $99 | $99 |
| Report cadence | Not required | Not required |
| Report fee | No report required | No report required |
| Entity-level tax on the LLC side | — | Commercial Activity Tax |
Both entities cost $99 to file in Ohio, so the filing fee is not a reason to pick one over the other.
Full Ohio LLC cost breakdown · LLC vs C-corp explained · LLC vs S-corp explained
State taxes a Ohio corporation pays
Corporate income tax
| Applies | No corporate income tax |
| Rate | None — Ohio levies no corporate income tax; entity-level taxation is via the Commercial Activity Tax (gross receipts tax) |
Franchise or gross-receipts tax
Ohio has no corporate net-income tax and no corporate franchise tax (the corporate franchise tax was fully phased out after 2013). Instead Ohio imposes the Commercial Activity Tax (CAT), a gross-receipts tax at 0.26% (2.6 mills per dollar) on taxable gross receipts above the annual exclusion amount. The exclusion is $6,000,000 for 2025 and thereafter (including 2026); it was $3,000,000 for 2024. Businesses with taxable gross receipts at or below the exclusion owe no CAT and are not required to register. The former annual minimum tax (AMT) was eliminated effective 2024.
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 Ohiolevies — 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where these numbers come from
This page covers the recurring report a for-profit corporation files with Ohio. Every figure was checked against Ohio'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.