Arkansas exempts the deed into your own LLC by statute, and the state's own published exemption rule doesn't mention it

The Arkansas Exemption, and the Conditions That Void It

Start with what the tax measures, because it's narrower than in most states. Section 26-60-105 provides that “[t]he taxes levied under this section shall be based solely on the consideration given for the lands, tenements, or other realty,” and § 26-60-101 defines consideration as “the amount of full actual consideration paid or to be paid for the property conveyed, including the amount of any purchase-money encumbrance executed by the purchaser.” A mortgage the LLC simply takes the property subject to isn't a purchase-money encumbrance executed by the purchaser, and we found no Department of Finance and Administration guidance treating a pre-existing assumed mortgage as consideration. That's the weakest single conclusion in the Arkansas record, and it's also largely beside the point, if § 26-60-102(11) applies, the chapter doesn't reach the instrument at all and there's nothing to measure.

Claiming it's a paperwork exercise with two routes. Section 26-60-107 contemplates the “Real Property Transfer Tax Affidavit of Compliance,” which must state either the consideration or the reason the tax doesn't apply. Section 26-60-110 allows a certifying statement signed by the grantee to be added to the instrument itself instead, and the Department says that route “is the more common method and has replaced the use of the Affidavit in the majority of recordings.” Either way, someone has to write down which exemption you're relying on. An exempt transfer that nobody claimed is a taxed transfer.

Now the thing that will happen at the counter, and that no other page about this seems to warn about. The Arkansas Code of Rules still carries 26 CAR § 166-102, “Real estate transfer tax exemptions”, the Department's regulation RE-2, promulgated in 1985. It lists five exemptions: certain divorce conveyances, judicial-sale deeds to a secured party, a deed in lieu of foreclosure, a deed back to the seller, and cemetery lots.

There's no business-entity exemption in it. That's not a conflict in the law; § 26-60-102(11) is statutory and postdates the regulation by thirty years, and a statute doesn't need the rule to catch up with it. But it means the state's own published rule text reads as though your exemption doesn't exist, and a circuit clerk or a title examiner working from the rule may say so. Take the statute with you.

One consequence of how the exemption is written: it's drafted around a corporate event, so how you paper the transfer matters more here than the identity of the parties does. Contributing the property to the LLC as capital and reciting that's a different document from selling it to the LLC for a stated sum, and only one of them fits the words of the section.

Authority: Ark. Code Ann. § 26-60-102(11). dfa.arkansas.gov

Does the Transfer Reset Your Property Tax in Arkansas?

This is the part of the Arkansas answer that gets published wrong in both directions, so here is exactly what we found and where it stops. Amendment 79 caps how fast taxable assessed value may rise, § 1(b)(1) limits the annual increase on a non-homestead parcel, § 1(c)(1) applies a tighter limit to a homestead “used as the taxpayer's principal place of residence,” and the only carve-outs in the amendment itself are for “newly discovered real property, new construction or substantial improvements to real property.”

Read the constitution alone and you conclude that nothing about a transfer resets anything. That's the wrong conclusion, because the reset is in the implementing statute. Ark. Code Ann. § 26-26-1123(a): “When a person sells his or her real property, the county assessor shall assess the real property at twenty percent (20%) of the appraised value at the next assessment date after the date of the transfer of title to the real property.” Subsection (b) adds that a new owner “isn't entitled to claim any limitation on the assessed value … until the second assessment date after the date of the transfer of title.”

One clarification before anything else, because the Assessment Coordination Division's own materials phrase it in a way that alarms people: twenty percent is Arkansas's statutory assessment ratio, not an increase. “Assessed at 20% of full value” means the parcel is assessed the way every Arkansas parcel is assessed, without the accumulated cap protecting it. What you lose is the shelter, not a fifth of your equity.

What we couldn't settle is whether your deed is a trigger at all. Every operative word in the statute and in the Division's materials is a sale or a purchase (“sells,” “transferred by a sale,” “is purchased”) and no Arkansas source we reached addresses a no-consideration deed from an individual to an LLC that individual wholly owns. So this page doesn't tell you the cap comes off, and it doesn't tell you it survives.

Two data points show Arkansas doesn't treat every transfer of title as a reset: § 26-26-1123(c) provides that the section “doesn't apply to any transfer of title to real property claimed as a homestead in which the owner or beneficiary of the homestead retains a life-estate interest,” and the Division's FAQ holds that conveying a frozen homestead into the owner's own revocable or irrevocable trust doesn't remove the freeze, because Amendment 79's “homestead” includes a dwelling owned by a revocable trust used as the principal residence of the person who formed it. Both carve-outs are built on homestead status and continued personal occupancy. An entity-owned rental has neither, so neither reasoning extends to it on its own terms.

Which makes this a question for the county assessor, asked before the deed is recorded rather than after the January bill arrives. The downside if the answer goes against you is the cap coming off the parcel at the next assessment date, and a second year before any new limitation can start accruing. Separately, the homestead side ends outright: the tighter cap is conditioned on the parcel being the taxpayer's principal place of residence, and the Amendment 79 homestead property tax credit under § 26-26-1118 is limited the same way.

Separately, and this catches people converting a former home into a rental: the benefits that turn on owning and occupying the property as your residence, a homestead exemption, an owner-occupancy credit, a residential assessment rate, are not things an LLC occupies a home to earn. Where the property still carries one, the deed puts it at risk, and the bill goes up whether or not the assessment itself moves. Which benefit is at stake, and on what terms, is a question for the assessor in the county the property sits in.

Authority: Ark. Code Ann. § 26-26-1123(a)-(c); Ark. Const. amend. 79, § 1, dfa.arkansas.gov

Moving a Property You Already Own Into the LLC in Arkansas

1. 1

   Paper the transfer as a contribution, not a sale

   Section 26-60-102(11) is keyed to the conveyance being incident to organisation, reorganisation, merger, consolidation, capitalisation, asset distribution or liquidation. Contributing the rental to the LLC as its capital fits those words. Reciting a purchase price and calling it a sale to your own entity doesn't obviously fit any of them, and there's no reason to introduce the doubt.

2. 2

   Put the exemption on the record at recording

   The exemption isn't self-executing. Either file the Real Property Transfer Tax Affidavit of Compliance under § 26-60-107 stating the reason the tax doesn't apply, or use the § 26-60-110 certifying statement signed by the grantee on the instrument itself, which the Department says has replaced the affidavit in most recordings. Name the subsection you're relying on.

3. 3

   Expect the published rule to contradict you, and bring the statute

   The Arkansas Code of Rules still carries the 1985 regulation listing five transfer tax exemptions, none of them the business-entity exemption. It predates Act 1098 of 2015 by three decades. If a clerk or title examiner works from the rule and tells you no exemption applies, the answer is § 26-60-102(11) itself.

4. 4

   Ask the county assessor about Amendment 79 before you record

   Section 26-26-1123 removes the cap when a person sells their real property, and no Arkansas source addresses a no-consideration deed to a wholly-owned LLC. The assessor for your county is the office that will make the call. Asking first costs a phone call; asking afterwards costs a year of uncapped assessment plus a second year before any new limitation begins.

5. 5

   Record, then move the operating paperwork across

   Leases, security deposits, the rent account and the insurance all need to name the LLC once it's the owner. If you set up a protected series, this is also where the § 4-37-301 associated-asset records begin. Each property's paperwork traceable to its own series from day one, because reconstructing it later is what breaks the shield.

6. 6

   Sort the tax registrations if you let short-term

   Arkansas applies both the gross receipts tax and the statewide tourism tax to accommodations furnished to transient guests, defined as guests renting on less than a month-to-month basis. City and county sales taxes and local advertising and promotion taxes are separate from both. Confirm what your platform collects and what it doesn't before you assume you're covered.

One LLC Per Property, or One for the Portfolio?

Arkansas authorises series LLCs, and a series can be filed with the state in its own right.

Arkansas has protected series, and the first thing to know is where to look for them. They're not in the LLC act. Arkansas enacted the Uniform Protected Series Act as its own chapter at Ark. Code § 4-37-101 et seq., amended by Act 1041 of 2021, so a search of the limited liability company chapter turns up nothing and leads people to conclude the state has no series at all.

The shield is at § 4-37-401(b): “A debt, obligation, or other liability of a series limited liability company is solely the debt, obligation, or liability of the company” and “A debt, obligation, or other liability of a protected series is solely the debt, obligation, or liability of the protected series.” Subsection (a) adds that a person isn't liable for those obligations “directly or indirectly, by way of contribution or otherwise,” solely by reason of being an associated member, a protected-series manager or a protected-series transferee.

What holds the shield up is the asset records. Section 4-37-301(a) provides that “[o]nly an asset of a protected series may be an associated asset of the protected series,” and requires the protected series to create and maintain records that identify the asset and distinguish it from the company's other assets. For a landlord that's not an abstraction: it means each property, each rent account, each deposit and each insurance policy has to be traceable to the series that owns it, permanently, and one shared operating account is how the record fails.

The Arkansas series is also public rather than internal, which is unusual and useful. Section 4-37-201(c) provides that “[a] protected series is established when the protected series designation takes effect,” and § 4-37-201(d) requires a statement of designation change to be delivered to the Secretary of State to amend it. So a lender, insurer or counterparty can verify from the state's records that a given series exists. Something they can't do in states where the series lives only inside the operating agreement. We didn't reach an Arkansas Secretary of State fee schedule for a protected series designation, so ask the Business and Commercial Services division what it costs before you assume it's free.

arkleg.state.ar.us

What Creditors Can Reach, What the Arkansas Statute Says

The reason to hold a rental in an LLC is usually to keep a claim arising at the property from reaching everything else you own. The reverse question matters just as much and gets far less attention: if someone wins a judgment against you personally, can they reach the rental inside the LLC? That is what a state’s charging-order provision decides.

Arkansas's LLC act makes the charging order the exclusive remedy, and says so for single-member LLCs specifically.

Arkansas rewrote this section in 2025 and most published copies of it are wrong. Act 461 of 2025 amended Ark. Code § 4-38-503 in full, and the current text forecloses nothing. Subsection (c): “(1) A charging order constitutes a lien on the judgment debtor's membership interest. (2) The charging order lien shall not be foreclosed on under this subchapter or any other law.”

Subsection (e): “The entry of a charging order is the exclusive remedy by which a judgment creditor of a member or of another owner of a membership interest may satisfy a judgment out of the judgment debtor's membership interest.” Subsection (g) adds that such a creditor “doesn't have the right to obtain possession of or otherwise exercise legal or equitable remedies with respect to the property of the limited liability company,” and subsection (b) limits the creditor to “a distribution to which the judgment debtor would otherwise be entitled.”

Subsection (h) addresses the single-member case in terms: “This section applies to: (1) A single-member limited liability company; and (2) A multiple-member limited liability company.” Act 461 got there by deleting, not by adding. Arkansas had carried over from the uniform act two routes to foreclosure, one available on a showing of bad faith, and one specific to a sole-member company under which “the purchaser at the sale obtains the member's entire interest” and “thereby becomes a member.” Both are struck from the current section.

Here is the practical warning. Act 461 carried no emergency clause, so it took effect on the ordinary schedule after the 2025 regular session adjourned, and the free code websites landlords and even lawyers reach for haven't all caught up. The widely used mirrors still serve the pre-2025 text of § 4-38-503, including the sole-member foreclosure subsection that no longer exists. If you look this up and find language letting a purchaser at a foreclosure sale become a member of your LLC, check the edition date on the page you're reading. We took the text on this page from the enrolled act itself.

We are reporting what the section says, not what a court would do with your facts. Outcomes turn on how the LLC was capitalised, how it has been operated and what the creditor is owed, and none of that is something a page can assess. If the answer above is load-bearing for you, it is a question for a Arkansas attorney.

Authority: Ark. Code § 4-38-503, as amended by Act 461 of 2025 (SB 319), arkleg.state.ar.us

Three Problems No State Transfer Rule Solves

These land the same way in Arkansas as everywhere else. One because it is federal law, two because they are contracts you signed. Which is exactly why they get left off state pages. They are also the three most likely to actually cost a landlord money, so they are here rather than buried.

The due-on-sale point is the one that generates the most bad advice. The Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act, at 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3(d), bars a lender from enforcing a due-on-sale clause on nine categories of transfer of residential property of fewer than five dwelling units. The one people cite is the eighth: a transfer into an inter vivos trust in which the borrower is and remains a beneficiary and which does not relate to a transfer of rights of occupancy in the property. Neither that paragraph nor any of the other eight names a transfer to a limited liability company. The protection quoted for an LLC transfer is written for trusts, and the occupancy qualifier is the limb that matters most to a landlord, because a rental is occupied by someone else.

One honest caveat on that list. The ninth category is open-ended. It reaches any other transfer described in regulations issued under the Act, at 12 C.F.R. § 591.5(b), so it is a list that can be extended by regulation rather than a closed set fixed by the statute. We have not read those regulations end to end, and say so rather than describing the statute as more settled than we checked.

In practice lenders often do not call a loan when payments keep arriving, and that is genuinely what usually happens, but “usually not enforced” is a different thing from “not permitted,” and only one of them is a plan. The way to find out is to ask your servicer for written consent before you record, not after.

Which deed you use is a decision, not a formality. A quitclaim deed transfers whatever interest you happen to have and warrants nothing, which is why it is the cheap default for a transfer between yourself and your own company, and why title professionals warn against it. It can leave a gap in the chain of title that surfaces years later when you sell or refinance, and because it warrants nothing it gives the LLC no recourse against you if a defect turns up. A warranty deed carries the covenants across. Which one is appropriate depends on how the property was acquired and what your title history looks like, and it is a question worth asking before the deed is drafted rather than after it is recorded.

Tell your title insurer before you record. An owner’s title policy insures the person named in it. Convey the property to an LLC and the insured owner and the record owner are no longer the same. Which is the fact pattern in which coverage gets argued about at the worst possible moment, when a claim is already live. Some insurers will endorse an existing policy across to the entity, sometimes for a modest fee; some will not, and a new policy means a new premium on the current value. Either way it is a phone call before the deed rather than a discovery afterwards, and it belongs in the same budget as the tax above.

On the fourth thing people ask about: beneficial ownership reporting. Under 31 C.F.R. § 1010.380, a “reporting company” is an entity formed outside the United States and registered to do business in a State, and paragraph (c)(2)(xxiv) separately exempts any entity created by filing with a Secretary of State. A rental LLC you form in Arkansas is therefore exempt and files no beneficial ownership report. Pages telling you to file within 30 days of formation are describing the rule as it stood before March 2025. The exception runs the other way: an LLC formed in another country and registered to do business in Arkansas does still report. More on what compliance actually requires →

Does Arkansas Make You Register the Rental?

Not at the state level. Arkansas runs no statewide rental registry, so registration is a municipal question, and what a municipality may require varies, in some states a city can impose an annual licence with an inspection, and in others state law caps or forbids local registries outright. The LLC does not change the answer either way: the duty attaches to the rental unit, not to the form of the owner. Check with the city or county the property sits in.

The Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division sets out the state's landlord and tenant rules, notice periods for rent increases and termination, the abandoned-property lien, the security deposit statute, and identifies no registration or licensing duty anywhere. It routes habitability enforcement to the cities: “There are, however, city building codes to protect your health and safety. If you've health or safety problems with your dwelling, contact the city to find out if the residence fully complies with housing codes.”

One Arkansas quirk is worth flagging because it's keyed to counting rather than to titling: the security deposit statute “applies only to landlords who rent six or more dwellings.” That threshold turns on the landlord's number of dwellings, and no Arkansas source we reached addresses how it's counted when several single-property LLCs share one owner. Don't assume splitting the portfolio changes the count, and don't assume it doesn't. It's a question for an Arkansas lawyer. Our negative on registration itself rests on a complete state consumer-protection page that never mentions it, rather than on an affirmative statement that none is required.

arkansasag.gov

If You Rent Short-Term in Arkansas

A short-term let is a different tax animal from a twelve-month tenancy, and the LLC has nothing to do with it. The lodging tax follows the stay, not the owner.

Arkansas doesn't draw the short-term line at a number of days, which is why there's no threshold in the table above and why importing “30 days” from another state's rules will mislead you. Section 26-52-301(3)(A)(ii) defines transient guests as “those who rent accommodations other than their regular place of abode on less than a month-to-month basis.” A nightly or weekly booking is plainly inside that; a month-to-month tenancy is outside it. The taxable service is described broadly enough to catch a house rather than only a hotel, § 26-52-301(3)(A)(i) names “rooms, suites, condominiums, townhouses, rental houses, or other accommodations,” and the tourism tax at § 26-63-402 separately names a “[c]ondominium, townhouse, or rental house to a transient guest.”

Platforms are caught twice over: § 26-63-402(1)(A)(ii) names “an accommodations intermediary” among the providers whose receipts are taxed, and § 26-52-111(a) requires a marketplace facilitator that facilitates sales for delivery into Arkansas to collect and remit the applicable sales tax above the statutory thresholds. On top of the state-level levies shown above, city and county sales taxes and local advertising and promotion taxes stack, and those are the ones a platform is least likely to be handling for you. A note on sourcing: the statutory text here came from mirrors, and they don't agree, an older text of § 26-63-402 doesn't contain the words “accommodations intermediary” while the more recent one does, so the platform answer rests on the newer text together with § 26-52-111.

A platform collecting the state tax does not always cover every local tax on the same booking, and it never covers a booking taken directly. If you take reservations off-platform as well, that is where the exposure sits.

Authority: Ark. Code §§ 26-52-301(3)(A), 26-63-402, 26-52-111, dfa.arkansas.gov

Who to Ask in Arkansas

For the transfer tax, the Department of Finance and Administration's Miscellaneous Tax section within Excise Tax Administration administers the real property transfer tax and publishes both the rate and the certifying-statement practice; they're the office to call if a recorder disputes your exemption. For the assessment question, the county assessor decides it on your parcel, and the Assessment Coordination Division inside the Department publishes the Amendment 79 guidance and the property tax FAQ that county offices work from. For landlord-tenant questions, the Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division is the state's own front door.

One structural thing to know before you go looking yourself: Arkansas doesn't publish its code on a free state host. The Legislature's site publishes acts but not the codified Arkansas Code, and the Bureau of Legislative Research links out to a commercial service. That's why the Act texts quoted on this page came from the Legislature's own PDFs while several codified section quotations came from a mirror, and it's why the 1985 exemption rule is easier to find online than the 2015 statute that overtook it.

Forming the LLC Itself

Nothing about the formation process changes because the LLC will hold rental property, the articles, the registered agent requirement and the annual filing are the same as for any other Arkansas LLC. The walkthrough lives in the formation guide rather than being repeated here.

How to start an LLC in Arkansas →

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