This guide is general information, not legal or tax advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. It reports what each state publishes about filing deadlines, fees, and the consequences of missing them, with the sources this page cites. It cannot tell you what your own company owes: the date turns on when and where you formed, states change these rules between our reviews, and in several states an entity-level tax falls due in a year when no report does. Confirm your own dates with the filing office named on this page before you rely on one here, because the penalty for missing a deadline can be administrative dissolution of the company.
Frequently Asked Questions
Your Hawaii LLC annual report is due by the end of the calendar quarter that contains your LLC's registration date, not on a fixed statewide deadline, and it is filed with the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs (DCCA). Registration dates from January 1 to March 31 make the report due March 31; April 1 to June 30 makes it due June 30; July 1 to September 30 makes it due September 30; and October 1 to December 31 makes it due December 31. You file through DCCA's Business Registration Division for $12.50 online or $15.00 on paper. Miss the quarter and DCCA adds a $10.00 late fee for each year you are delinquent, and an LLC that simply stops filing can be administratively terminated, which ends the entity's authority to carry on business other than winding up. Your first report follows one year on: an entity registered in the same year a report would otherwise be due does not have to file for that year. Set a calendar reminder at the start of your registration quarter each year, then file online at cca.hawaii.gov.
Missing your Hawaii LLC annual report deadline is cheap at first and expensive later. The Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs (DCCA) adds a $10.00 late fee for each year you are delinquent, on top of the $12.50 online or $15.00 paper report fee, and you can still file the overdue report online. The serious risk is what comes next: an LLC that stops filing can be administratively terminated by DCCA. Termination ends the entity's authority to carry on business other than winding up, and your name is no longer held for you on the register. Coming back means filing an Application for Reinstatement for Administratively Terminated Limited Liability Company at $25.00 ($25.00 expedited), plus the reports and late fees still owed. Note that General Excise Tax obligations run separately through the Department of Taxation and are unaffected by the annual report. File through DCCA's online portal at cca.hawaii.gov by the end of your registration quarter to keep the entity active.
Yes, a Hawaii LLC must keep a registered agent with a physical Hawaii street address (a PO box does not qualify) to receive legal documents and official state correspondence. You can act as your own agent if you have a Hawaii address, and many owners instead pay a commercial registered agent service so that documents don't get missed when they move or travel.
Your registered agent's address appears on your public filing with the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs (DCCA), so it is visible to anyone who looks up your entity, including potential litigants and creditors. If service of process can't reach you, you can lose a case you never knew about. A commercial agent supplies a business address that keeps your home address off the record and guarantees someone is there during business hours to accept legal notices, which matters most exactly when you are sued or facing regulatory action. Update your agent information with DCCA promptly whenever it changes, and confirm what is on file when you file your annual report each year.
Hawaii's first-year state filing cost of about $62.50 is roughly $170 below the national average, the sixth lowest of the 50 states. The recurring side is where it stays cheap: at $12.50 filed online, the annual report is the 13th lowest ongoing cost in the country, and five years of ownership comes to about $112.50 in state filing fees, ninth lowest nationally.
Hawaii imposes no entity-level franchise tax on a default LLC, and the routine extras are modest, with a certificate of good standing at $5 and a certified copy at $10.
Be careful about reading that as a low-cost state overall. Hawaii's General Excise Tax is 4% of gross income statewide, 4.5% on Oahu with the county surcharge, and it is charged on gross receipts rather than profit, so an unprofitable year with revenue still generates a bill far larger than the $12.50 report. The GET license itself is a one-time $20.
The practical move is to treat the filing fees as trivial and the tax as the real planning problem. Confirm your annual report quarter on the DCCA website and put that quarter-end date on your compliance calendar today.
Sources
Each entry below is a document recorded in our verified Hawaii sources, and each entry says what the document is. Some statutory text is read from an accurate mirror rather than from the state's own host, and those say so.
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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.
