One missed annual statement is not what stops LARA from issuing your certificate

The Bottom Line for Michigan LLCs

You order it from LARA's Corporations Division and it is emailed to the account that placed and paid for the order. Michigan is precise about when it will refuse: the statutory bar runs on two consecutive missed annual statements, not on one.

MCL 450.4207a tells the administrator what the certificate has to say and then, in subsection 3, bars issuance outright to an LLC that is not in good standing. The trigger for that status is a company that has failed to file an annual statement for two consecutive years and has not cured within sixty days of the administrator's notice. That is a genuine bar rather than a disclosure, so unlike states whose certificate reports a delinquency and issues anyway, Michigan's simply does not come out. It also means an LLC a single year behind is generally still able to order one, which catches owners out in both directions: some assume they are blocked when they are not, and others assume they are safe well past the point where the notice has already gone out.

What Michigan Actually Calls It

Michigan calls it a Certificate of Good Standing, issued by Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, Corporations, Securities and Commercial Licensing Bureau, Corporations Division.

A certificate of good standing issued to a domestic limited liability company shall state that it has been validly organized as a domestic limited liability company, that it is validly in existence under the laws of this state, and that it has satisfied its annual filing obligations. For a foreign LLC it states that the company was validly authorized to transact business in this state, holds a valid certificate of authority, and has satisfied its annual filing obligations.

Michigan also uses Certificate of Status, Certificate of Fact for documents in this family.

Why You Need One

Four requesters account for nearly all of these orders. Another state's filing office wants Michigan's confirmation before it will register your LLC as a foreign entity there. A bank or an SBA lender wants it in the underwriting file for a term loan or a line of credit. A buyer or an investor wants it in diligence on a sale or a raise. A large customer's procurement portal wants it uploaded before it will set you up as a payable vendor. Landlords and license renewals ask less often, and when they do the request usually comes with a dating rule of the requester's own, applied to a document whose shelf life Michigan itself has not addressed.

What It Costs in Michigan

Michigan charges $10 for the Certificate of Good Standing. A Certificate of Fact- Listing ALL documents filed costs $50.

Expedited service is available: Expedited at $12.50 in total rather than the ordinary price.

Where this fee comes from: CERTIFICATES / CERTIFICATE NAME: Good Standing / WHO CAN REQUEST: Corporation and LLC / FEE: $10 / EXPEDITED: $12.50

How to Order It

You can order the Certificate of Good Standing online, by mail, in person, by phone and by fax.

Michigan does not publish a turnaround time for the Certificate of Good Standing, so this page does not quote one.

Order it on the Michigan site

Ordered through the MiBusiness Registry Portal, which went live on June 23, 2025 and requires a MiLogin for Business account.

The friction here is the account rather than the form. Orders run through the MiBusiness Registry, and the certificate is delivered to the email attached to the MiLogin for Business profile that paid, so an order placed from a bookkeeper's login arrives in the bookkeeper's inbox. Sort that out before you are against a deadline. The fee table is the second trap: it lists several LLC certificates side by side, and only one of them is the good standing certificate. The long form that lists every document the entity has ever filed is a much heavier document answering a different question, and a lender who asked for good standing will not want it. Expedited handling on certificates is priced as a percentage of the order rather than at the flat rates printed on the expedite form used for filings, so an expedite figure quoted to you by a filing agent may be the wrong one. And if the portal will not cooperate, the Division still takes certificate orders over the phone.

1. 1

   Set up the MiLogin for Business account that will receive it

   The certificate goes to the email on the profile that pays, so decide now whether that should be you, your registered agent or your accountant. Creating the account after you have started an order is the most common reason an order stalls.

2. 2

   Check the entity's annual statement history first

   Look at how many statements are outstanding, not just whether one is. A single late year normally still leaves the certificate orderable, while two consecutive missed years put you inside the statutory bar and make the order pointless until you have restored.

3. 3

   Pick the right certificate off the Division's list

   The fee table offers more than one certificate for an LLC. Take the good standing certificate unless the requester specifically asked for a filing history, in which case the long form is the one they mean.

4. 4

   Place the order and pay by card

   The portal takes a debit or credit card at the end of the form. If you want expedited handling, confirm what it costs on a certificate rather than assuming the expedite prices you have seen for document filings apply.

5. 5

   Watch the ordering account's inbox

   Delivery is by email to the MiLogin for Business address, not to whatever address you typed elsewhere in the form. Check spam filtering on that mailbox before you conclude the order failed.

6. 6

   If you are barred, file the restoration and the missed statements together

   Restoring good standing is one filing plus every annual statement you skipped, submitted as a package. The certificate becomes available once the Division has processed both, so plan the deal timetable around that rather than around the certificate order itself.

What Puts You Out of Standing in Michigan

Before Michigan will issue the Certificate of Good Standing, your filings with the state's business filing office have to be current. No separate tax clearance from a revenue agency is part of it.

MCL 450.4207a conditions the certificate on organization, existence and annual filing obligations only. Michigan does require a Treasury tax clearance request within 60 days of filing a Certificate of Dissolution, but that is a different filing and does not gate a certificate of good standing.

An LLC that is not in good standing must first file form CSCL/CD-770 Certificate of Restoration of Good Standing ($50) together with the missed annual statements ($25 per missing year for an LLC).

Michigan's status turns on the annual statement, and the mechanism has three moving parts worth knowing separately. The first is the two year trigger: subsection 3 bites on two consecutive years of non-filing, not on one late year. The second is the notice: the administrator has to notify the company, and the clock on curing runs sixty days from that notice, which means the address on file with the Division is load bearing in a way owners rarely think about. The third is the way back, which is a filing rather than an appeal. A restoration of good standing form goes in together with the statements you skipped, each missed year carrying its own charge, and the certificate becomes orderable once both parts have posted to the record. Treasury sits outside all of this: its clearance requirement attaches to dissolution, not to a certificate order.

How Long It Stays Good in Michigan

Michigan publishes nothing about how long the Certificate of Good Standing stays current. Whoever asked you for it does: banks, lenders and other states' filing offices each set their own recency rule, and that window is theirs, not Michigan's. Ask what it is, and order the certificate once you know.

Michigan does not publish how long the Division takes, and the FAQ describes only the delivery method, so plan around an unknown rather than an advertised wait. In practice that argues for the same discipline the recency question already imposes: order once the counterparty has told you its dating rule, not while you are still assembling the deal, and watch the inbox tied to the ordering account rather than your own. If a receiving state or a lender wants one issued inside a set number of days, count backwards from the day you will send the package and place the order then, leaving room for an email that does not arrive as fast as a download would.

Using It Outside the United States

For use abroad, Michigan Department of State, Office of the Great Seal will authenticate the certificate with an apostille for $1 per document.

Who to Ask in Michigan

The Corporations Division, inside LARA's Corporations, Securities and Commercial Licensing Bureau, issues the certificate and answers entity, name availability and annual statement questions by phone on weekdays. It takes payment at its Lansing counter by check or card and by mail to its Lansing post office box, and it will take a certificate order on the same phone line that answers entity questions. The office that apostilles the certificate is not LARA: authentication goes to the Michigan Department of State's Office of the Great Seal, a different department entirely, so a certificate headed abroad passes through two agencies and two queues rather than one. The Department of Treasury handles tax clearances tied to dissolving a company, which is a separate filing and not a step in this order.

Sources

• legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-450-4207a
• michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/lara/cscl/Folder6/Filing_Fees.pdf
• michigan.gov/lara/bureau-list/cscl/corps/frequently-asked-questions
• michigan.gov/en/lara/bureau-list/cscl/corps/how-do-i/services/telephone-services
• michigan.gov/lara/bureau-list/cscl/corps
• michigan.gov/sos/all-services/document-authentication-and-apostille

Every figure on this page was read from a Michigan government source, not from a formation service. Confidence in this record: high. See our editorial policy for how these are verified and corrected.