New Hampshire LLC Annual Compliance Requirements (2026)
New Hampshire LLC compliance for 2026: the January 1 to April 1 annual report, $100 fee and $50 late fee, registered agent rules, and BPT and BET thresholds.
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
If you miss the April 1 annual report deadline, RSA 304-C:191, II(f) adds an additional late filing fee of $50, so the report costs $150 instead of $100. That is a single flat fee. New Hampshire does not charge a daily accrual or a rising cap. The filing itself is the annual report submitted to the New Hampshire Secretary of State's Division of Corporations, and the window it belongs to runs from January 1 to April 1. Your LLC's good standing is at risk while the report is outstanding, which can jeopardize contracts, licenses, and the entity's liability protection. An LLC that keeps not filing is subject to administrative dissolution, after which reinstatement costs $135 under RSA 304-C:138, I, or $500 for late reinstatement under RSA 304-C:145, I. File the overdue report at sos.nh.gov as soon as you realize it is late, since the cost only escalates if the LLC lapses into dissolution.
No, New Hampshire doesn't require LLC publication in newspapers. RSA 304-C contains no newspaper publication requirement, and formation is complete on the Secretary of State's receipt and filing of the Certificate of Formation under RSA 304-C:31.
That saves you the cost and the administrative burden that publication states impose: selecting approved newspapers, coordinating publication timelines, and obtaining affidavits of publication to file with the state. New Hampshire has none of it.
You still file your Certificate of Formation (form LLC-1) with the New Hampshire Secretary of State and pay the $100 fee under RSA 304-C:191, II(c). Your recurring Secretary of State obligation is the $100 annual report, due between January 1 and April 1. Separately, the Department of Revenue Administration collects Business Profits Tax and Business Enterprise Tax if your LLC clears their thresholds.
Next step: file your Certificate of Formation with the NH Secretary of State's business services division to complete your LLC formation, with no newspaper requirement to satisfy.
Yes, you can serve as your own registered agent for your New Hampshire LLC if you maintain a physical street address (not a PO box) within the state and are consistently available during normal business hours to receive legal documents. You list your name and address on the Certificate of Formation filed with the New Hampshire Secretary of State.
This approach carries practical risks. As your own agent, you are personally responsible for receiving and promptly forwarding all legal documents, tax notices, and compliance deadlines. Missing service of process could result in a default judgment against your LLC. Your address also becomes public record, accessible through the Secretary of State's database.
Many New Hampshire LLC owners instead hire a professional registered agent service, which typically costs $100 to $300 annually. These services maintain a stable address, ensure documents are received, and send compliance reminders ahead of the January 1 to April 1 annual report window.
To proceed, decide whether you will self-serve or retain an agent before filing your Certificate of Formation, and remember to confirm the agent's details on each annual report.
New Hampshire levies no general sales tax and no broad-based tax on wages, which is a real advantage for members taking distributions from an LLC. But it is a mistake to call New Hampshire a no-tax state for LLCs, because it taxes business organizations at the entity level. The Business Profits Tax is 7.5% of taxable business profits under RSA 77-A:2 and is owed by organizations with gross business income above the filing threshold, $109,000 for taxable periods beginning on or after January 1, 2025, a figure adjusted biennially for inflation from the $92,000 base in RSA 77-A:6. The Business Enterprise Tax is 0.55% of the taxable enterprise value tax base under RSA 77-E:2, II for enterprises with gross business receipts or an enterprise value tax base above $298,000, adjusted biennially from the $250,000 base in RSA 77-E:5. Neither tax has a flat minimum, so below the thresholds the tax is zero and no return is required. That is what makes the structure genuinely favorable for a small LLC: it pays $100 a year to the Secretary of State and nothing to the Department of Revenue Administration until it grows past those thresholds, at which point the tax dwarfs the filing fee. Model your projected gross business income against the $109,000 and $298,000 thresholds with a New Hampshire tax professional before you assume either tax does or does not reach you.
Sources
Each entry below is a document recorded in our verified New Hampshire 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.
