Montana LLC compliance for 2026: the annual report is free January 1 to April 15 and $35 after, plus registered agent rules, no franchise tax, and dissolution risk.
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
File the annual report with the Montana Secretary of State through the online business filing service at sosmt.gov. The window runs January 1 to April 15 each year, and the report is free inside it and $35 after April 15. Your filing confirms the LLC's legal name and Montana filing number, the registered agent's name and Montana street address (a PO box does not qualify), the principal office address, and at least one member or manager with a mailing address. A new company files nothing in its first calendar year: MCA 35-8-208 puts the first report in the January 1 to April 15 window of the year following the calendar year in which the LLC is organized. Missing April 15 does not dissolve the LLC, it changes the price to $35. What does end the company is prolonged silence: under MCA 35-8-209 the Secretary of State may involuntarily dissolve an LLC whose report is 140 days overdue, and reinstatement then costs $35 plus an additional $35 for each year of delinquent reports.
Nothing is added as a penalty, because Montana has no late fee and charges no interest. What changes is the price of the report itself: free if filed between January 1 and April 15, $35 if filed after April 15. A report filed on April 16 and one filed in November both cost $35.
Filing late does not dissolve the LLC on its own. The limit is set by MCA 35-8-209, which allows the Secretary of State to involuntarily dissolve an LLC that has failed for 140 days to file its annual report. Once dissolved, the company has no registered standing to contract or to hold its name, and reinstating it costs $35 plus an additional $35 for each year of delinquent annual reports, so several missed years compound quickly.
If you have already missed April 15, the cheapest move is simply to file now at sosmt.gov and pay the $35, well before the 140-day mark.
Yes. Montana requires every LLC to maintain a registered agent with a physical Montana address for service of process and official state correspondence. You can serve as your own agent if you have a Montana office or residence where you are reliably available during business hours. Otherwise you appoint a commercial registered agent service; our cost model budgets about $125 a year for one, which for a Montana LLC is several times the state's own annual charge. The agent's name and address are filed on the Articles of Organization and confirmed on each annual report, filed between January 1 and April 15. Letting the appointment lapse is treated like letting the report lapse: the Secretary of State can involuntarily dissolve the LLC, and reinstatement costs $35 plus another $35 for each year of delinquent reports. If you act as your own agent, make sure someone is actually at the listed address, because a missed service of process can turn into a default judgment against your business, and remember that the address you list is public.
Yes, though Montana's list is short. The annual report goes to the Secretary of State between January 1 and April 15 and is free inside that window, $35 after. Beyond it, keep your own business records in order, including financial documentation and whatever the operating agreement requires, and keep the registered agent details on the register accurate by filing a change with the Secretary of State whenever the agent or the agent's address changes. Montana imposes no franchise, privilege, or minimum entity tax and no publication requirement, so there is no separate state entity filing to remember. What does still apply is industry licensing: regulated trades and professional services need their own credentials from the relevant Montana licensing body, and those renew on their own schedule rather than with the annual report. Your next step is to check the registered agent details on your record and put April 15 in a compliance calendar so the filing stays free.
Sources
Each entry below is a document recorded in our verified Montana 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.
