Missouri doesn't merely lack a deed tax. Its constitution stops anyone from creating one.

Missouri Charges No Transfer Tax on the Deed

The provision is short and it does the whole job. Missouri voters adopted article X, section 25 on 2 November 2010, effective a month later, and it names its targets: the state, counties, and other political subdivisions, all prevented from imposing any new tax on the sale or transfer of homes or any other real estate. That last clause is what removes the question this page has to spend three paragraphs on in a home-rule state. There is no city stacking anything on the same deed, because the same sentence that binds the legislature binds the city.

What that means at the drafting table is a short list of things you do not have to do. No exemption to claim and no code section to cite on the instrument. No affidavit of consideration to swear. No decision about whether to write a token figure or the real one, because nothing measures the figure. No structuring the conveyance to fit within relief, because there is no relief to fit within. The deed conveys, the recorder records, and the transaction is over.

The money that does change hands is in chapter 59, and it is worth knowing which sections it comes from rather than treating it as an unlabelled counter charge. Section 59.320 is headed "Fee to be paid before record made", § 59.319 carries a user fee plus an additional fee required to record an instrument, and § 59.321 adds a one-dollar filing fee that goes to the county employees' retirement system. These are charges for the act of recording, set by the legislature, and none of them asks what the property is worth or what is owed on it. The recorder of deeds in the county where the property sits will quote the total.

One consequence and one disclosure. The consequence is that Missouri has no controlling-interest tax, the provision states that exist to stop owners transferring the company instead of the building exist to protect a conveyance tax, and there is no conveyance tax here to protect. The disclosure is about our own sourcing: the Department of Revenue's business tax-types page refused our requests outright, so the cross-check came from the parent taxation index, which loaded and lists sales and use, withholding, income, tobacco and motor fuel taxes with no deed, stamp or transfer tax among them.

revisor.mo.gov

Does the Transfer Reset Your Property Tax in Missouri?

No. Missouri does not cap a property’s assessed value at what you paid for it, assessments track market value on the assessor’s own cycle regardless of who holds title. A deed from you to an LLC you own does not change the assessment, because there was never an acquisition-date value locked in to lose. This is the part of the California story that gets copied onto pages about states where it simply does not apply.

Missouri reassesses on a two-year clock keyed to odd-numbered years, and a conveyance is not one of the things that starts it. Mo. Rev. Stat. § 137.115.1 requires that the assessor "shall annually assess all real property ... at the percent of its true value in money set in subsection 5", and then fixes the cycle: "new assessed values shall be determined as of January first of each odd-numbered year and shall be entered in the assessor's books", carrying forward into the following even-numbered year except for new construction and improvements. New construction and improvements are the exceptions the statute names. A deed from you to a company you own is not on that list, there is no cap for a transfer to break, and true value in money is not acquisition price.

Missouri has no general homestead exemption from ad valorem tax, so the thing most pages warn about is not on the table. What can be lost is the senior property tax credit at § 137.1050, and it is worth being precise about why, because the statute does not say what people assume it says. The "eligible taxpayer" test is satisfied by a Missouri resident aged sixty-two or older who "[i]s an owner of record of a homestead or has a legal or equitable interest in such property as evidenced by a written instrument" and is liable for the tax. That is not an entity-ownership bar.

The alternative limb is broad enough that the statute does not squarely say title in a company defeats the credit on its own. What defeats it for anyone reading this page is the other definition: a "homestead" is "real property actually occupied by an eligible taxpayer as the primary residence". A house you rent out fails that on its own terms, before the question of who holds title is reached.

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: Mo. Rev. Stat. § 137.115.1; Mo. Rev. Stat. § 137.1050, revisor.mo.gov

Moving a Property You Already Own Into the LLC in Missouri

1. 1

   Settle the series question before the articles are filed

   Missouri names series in the articles of organization themselves, and § 347.186(2)(1)(e) and (f) put two separate requirements there, notice of the limitation, and separate identification of each series. An existing company without both has an amendment to file before the shield is live. If one company for the whole portfolio is the plan, skip this entirely; nothing about holding rental property changes the formation paperwork.

2. 2

   Get the servicer's written position before the deed exists

   A constitutional bar on transfer taxes says nothing about your loan. Deeding to a company is a transfer of title, which is what the due-on-sale clause is drafted to catch, and that clause is contract and federal law rather than Missouri law. A written answer before recording is worth more than an explanation afterwards.

3. 3

   Record the deed with the recorder of deeds

   There's no transfer tax return, no consideration affidavit, no exemption to claim and no wording to get right, because there's no tax and no county may create one. The charge is the recording fee under §§ 59.319, 59.320 and 59.321. The recorder will quote it, and it's the entire cost of the conveyance.

4. 4

   Get the retail sales license before the first short-term booking

   Section 144.083.3 bars making sales at retail without a valid license, and § 144.083.1 has it issued at no cost, so the only thing standing between an operator and compliance is doing it. Do it before you apply for any city or county occupation license, because § 144.083.2 makes the state license and a no-tax-due statement a prerequisite to that municipal one.

5. 5

   Ask the assessor which cycle year the parcel is in

   Nothing about the deed moves the assessment, but Missouri revalues as of January first of each odd-numbered year, so knowing where you sit in that cycle tells you when the next notice is due and separates a routine revaluation from anything you might otherwise blame on the transfer.

6. 6

   Re-paper the leases, the policy and the license itself

   After recording, the landlord named in each lease, the named insured on the policy, the deposit and utility accounts and the retail sales license still name you rather than the company. The license is the one people forget, because it was issued for free and never asked anything of them again.

One LLC Per Property, or One for the Portfolio?

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

Missouri has authorised series since 2013, and the mechanism is unusual enough that copying a Delaware or Texas checklist will not work. There is no standalone series certificate today. The series is named in the parent company's articles of organization, and that filing is what brings it into existence: Mo. Rev. Stat. § 347.186(4)(1)(a) provides that "Upon filing of articles of organization setting forth the name of each series with limited liability, in compliance with section 347.037 or amendments under section 347.041, the series' existence shall begin", and 4(1)(b) makes the stamped articles "conclusive evidence that all required conditions have been met and that the series has been or shall be legally organized and formed under this section". Winding one up is a filing too, articles of amendment identifying the series being dissolved, under 4(1)(d). And the Secretary of State polices the names: subsection 3 requires that a series name "contain the entire name of the limited liability company and be distinguishable from the names of the other series set forth in the articles of organization."

The shield in subsection 2(1) arrives with six conditions, and two of them are easy to conflate. Paragraph (e) requires that notice of the limitation on liabilities be included in the articles of organization. Paragraph (f) separately requires that the company "has filed articles of organization that separately identify each series which is to have limited liability under this section." A general notice clause is not the same as naming each series, and both have to be in the articles rather than only in the operating agreement.

The other four are that the operating agreement creates the series, that separate and distinct records are maintained for it, that its assets are accounted for separately "whether held directly or indirectly, including through a nominee or otherwise", and that the operating agreement provides for the limitations. A company that already exists and wants series has an amendment to file before any of this is live.

There is a version trap here that anyone checking this for themselves will walk into. The Revisor's site serves § 347.186 defaulting to the version effective 28 August 2026, which was not yet law when this record was made. The text above is the version actually in force, pulled by enactment identifier and diffed against the newer one.

The 2026 act changes nothing about the shield, its conditions or the filing requirement. It adds a sentence promising that "[n]ot later than January 31, 2027, each series shall be individually profiled, maintained, and searchable as a business entity on the secretary of state's business services website in the same manner that a nonseries entity is profiled", and a sentence letting a series in good standing obtain a stand-alone certificate of good standing under a newly created § 347.044. Both push Missouri further toward treating a series as a filed thing rather than an internal one.

On the cost of designating one: § 347.179 is the fee schedule for the whole LLC chapter, worded as a closed command, "The secretary shall charge and collect:" followed by fifteen enumerated subdivisions, and it contains no series line item at all. That reading comes from the fee statute itself rather than from an agency page, because four candidate URLs on the Secretary of State's own site returned a page-not-found body under a success status and the start-a-business page publishes no fee table and does not mention series once.

revisor.mo.gov

What Creditors Can Reach, What the Missouri 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.

Missouri's LLC act contains no exclusive-remedy provision.

Missouri does have a charging-order section. What it does not have is an exclusivity sentence, and the difference is the whole point. Mo. Rev. Stat. § 347.119 reads in its entirety: "On application to a court of competent jurisdiction by any judgment creditor of a member, the court may charge the member's interest in the limited liability company with payment of the unsatisfied amount of the judgment with interest. To the extent so charged, the judgment creditor has only the rights of an assignee of the member's interest. Sections 347.010 to 347.187 do not deprive any member of the benefit of any exemption laws applicable to his interest in the limited liability company." Three sentences. That is the section.

Catalogue what is absent, because the absences are what a reader is really asking about. There is no sentence making the charging order the exclusive remedy. The words single member and sole member do not appear, so the structure most rental owners here actually use is not addressed. And foreclosure of the charged interest is neither authorised nor forbidden. The section is silent, rather than permissive or protective. Missouri has not adopted the Revised Uniform Limited Liability Company Act, so there is no section 503 analogue sitting elsewhere in the chapter to fill any of that in.

The text is stable, which is worth stating given how much else in this chapter moves. Section 347.119 took effect on 1 December 1993, carries a single enactment with the history line "(L. 1993 S.B. 66 & 20 § 359.774)", and has never been amended. The 2026 act that rewrites the series provisions and creates a new certificate section does not touch it, so what is quoted above is the text both today and after that act commences. Anything a comparison chart says about Missouri charging orders is describing these three sentences, and the honest reading of them is that they say less than most states' do.

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 Missouri attorney.

Authority: Mo. Rev. Stat. Section 347.119, revisor.mo.gov

Three Problems No State Transfer Rule Solves

These land the same way in Missouri 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 Missouri 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 Missouri does still report. More on what compliance actually requires →

Does Missouri Make You Register the Rental?

Not for a long-term tenancy. Missouri does run a statewide registration through the Missouri Department of Revenue, under Mo. Rev. Stat. § 144.083, but it is scoped to a category a conventional residential lease does not fall into. If you rent to a tenant on an ordinary lease, there is nothing to file with the state, and nothing that changes when the deed moves to the LLC. What follows sets out what the registration does cover, so you can check your own arrangement against it.

Missouri's version of this duty is the cleanest we have read, in the sense that the statute states it as a prohibition rather than leaving you to infer it from a tax base. Mo. Rev. Stat. § 144.083.3: "No person responsible for the collection of taxes under section 144.080 shall make sales at retail unless such person is the holder of a valid retail sales license." Not "must register", must not sell.

Subsection 1 requires the director of revenue to make such persons "procure a retail sales license at no cost to the licensee which shall be prominently displayed at the licensee's place of business", and adds that anyone beginning business after 13 August 1986 "shall secure a retail sales license prior to making sales at retail." The display requirement is drafted for a shop and reads oddly against a house, which is a reasonable thing to raise with the Department rather than to resolve by guessing.

The chain from that to a single rented house runs through the definition of a retail sale. Section 144.010.1(13)(e) brings within "sale at retail" the charges "for all rooms, meals and drinks furnished at any hotel, motel, tavern, inn, restaurant, eating house, drugstore, dining car, tourist camp, tourist cabin, or other place in which rooms, meals or drinks are regularly served to the public". The words doing the work for a landlord are "tourist camp, tourist cabin, or other place", a nineteenth-century roadside vocabulary that happens to catch a twenty-first-century short-term let.

One more consequence worth knowing before you deal with a city. Under § 144.083.2, holding the retail sales license together with a statement of no tax due is "a prerequisite to the issuance or renewal of any city or county occupation license". The state license gates the municipal one, so a permit application that stalls at the city may actually be stuck at the state. And the negative for ordinary landlords: a conventional twelve-month tenancy is not a sale of rooms regularly served to the public, so no state registration follows from it. We did not reach the Missouri Housing Development Commission or the Attorney General's landlord-tenant guidance to corroborate that, so it rests on the statutory text rather than on an agency saying it.

revisor.mo.gov

If You Rent Short-Term in Missouri

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.

The most useful thing on this page for a Missouri short-term operator is a number that is not here. There is no length-of-stay threshold in the state charge. Section 144.020.1(6) taxes charges for rooms "furnished at any hotel, motel, tavern, inn, restaurant, eating house, drugstore, dining car, tourist cabin, tourist camp or other place in which rooms, meals or drinks are regularly served to the public". The test is the character of the place, not the length of any particular guest's stay, and § 144.010, the definitions section for the whole sales tax, contains no definition of "transient guest" at all.

If you have met a thirty-one-day line in Missouri, it came from a local transient guest tax levied by a city or county, which is a separate charge with its own rules. Carrying that line across to the state sales tax is a common and expensive mistake.

The rate has a component this record could not verify, and the note above says so rather than hiding it. The figure that appears in chapter 144 is the statutory one, and it is the only one we read on a primary source. The larger combined figure a Missouri operator actually charges includes two earmarks that live in article IV of the Missouri Constitution (conservation, and parks and soils), rather than in the tax chapter. Both constitutional sections returned a generic page from the Revisor's site, and three attempts at the Department of Revenue's rate tables hung or timed out. Rather than publish a combined rate nobody here had read, the record carries the statutory one and flags the difference. The Department is the place to get the current combined figure, and it publishes rates by locality because the local layer varies anyway.

On platforms, the duty is on its face unambiguous and the characterisation underneath it is not. Mo. Rev. Stat. § 144.752.2(1) requires marketplace facilitators engaged in business in Missouri to register and collect from 1 January 2023, "regardless of whether the marketplace seller for whom sales are facilitated possesses a retail sales license or would have been required to collect use tax had the sale not been facilitated", and § 144.752.5 makes the facilitator state the tax separately on the purchaser's invoice.

The wrinkle is that the provision is framed in terms of use tax on sales "delivered into the state", which is an awkward fit for a room consumed at a Missouri address that would ordinarily bear sales tax. The obligation on the platform is plain from the text; the sales-versus-use characterisation for in-state lodging is a question we would not claim to have settled.

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: Mo. Rev. Stat. § 144.020.1(6), revisor.mo.gov

Who to Ask in Missouri

The recorder of deeds in the county where the property sits records the deed and quotes the fee under chapter 59. There's no transfer tax desk to call, because the constitution prevents the tax. The county assessor holds the parcel record, can say which year of the odd-numbered-year cycle you're in, and is the office for any senior property tax credit question.

The Department of Revenue issues the retail sales license and the statement of no tax due, publishes the combined sales tax rates this page deliberately doesn't quote, and administers the marketplace facilitator regime. The city or county collector is who levies and collects a local transient guest tax, and that's where the thirty-one-day concept actually lives. The Secretary of State takes the articles of organization or the articles of amendment that name a series, and from 2027 is meant to profile each series individually on its business services website.

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 Missouri LLC. The walkthrough lives in the formation guide rather than being repeated here.

How to start an LLC in Missouri →

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