Your Arizona LLC Is Doing Business in Another State
The short answer. You keep one LLC. It stays registered in Arizona, which charges no recurring state filing fee, though the LLC keeps whatever obligations Arizona attaches to it, and a state that finds you are doing business there adds its own registration and its own filings on top. Whether your activity counts is decided by that state's own rule, not by this page. Of the 47 other states that have one figure to compare, 45 cost more in year-one registration than Arizona's own first-year total of $50, and 2 cost the same. Tennessee and Washington are outside those figures: Tennessee's fee scales with member count from $300, and Washington's $180 is before back fees, so neither has one figure to compare.
What you keep paying in Arizona
Every Arizona fee behind these figures is broken out on what an LLC costs in Arizona.
What a second state adds
These are the states closest to Arizona’s own cost line, plus the three dearest to enter. Each figure is that state’s first-year registration cost for an out-of-state LLC, beside what it charges every year after. Whether your activity counts as doing business there depends on the facts, and each state defines it differently.
| State | Year one to register | State charges, each year after | Against your year one ($50) |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Dakota | $750 | $55/yr | $700 more |
| Texas | $750 | None | $700 more |
| Massachusetts | $500 | $520/yr | $450 more |
| Colorado | $100 | $25/yr | $50 more |
| Ohio | $99 | None | $49 more |
| Kentucky | $90 | from $190/yr | $40 more |
| California | $70 | $810/yr | $20 more |
| Montana | $70 | None | $20 more |
| Utah | $59 | $18/yr | $9 more |
| Hawaii | $50 | $12.50/yr | the same |
| Michigan | $50 | $25/yr | the same |
A state charge of None is not a tax of none. The column is the recurring charge our fee dataset records, and a state that asks for no recurring filing may still levy an entity-level tax that sits outside it.
What we verified about Arizona's own costs
Our notes, from Arizona's published fee schedules and statutes.
Arizona LLCs are formed with the Arizona Corporation Commission, not the Secretary of State, and Articles of Organization (form L010) cost $50, or $85 with expedited review, under the Commission's fee schedule revised March 2026. There is no annual report and no franchise tax for Arizona LLCs, making it one of the cheapest states to maintain. The offsetting cost is publication: A.R.S. 29-3201(G) requires notice to run three consecutive times in a newspaper in the statutory agent's county within 60 days, though LLCs whose statutory agent address is in Maricopa or Pima County get the notice posted by the Commission for free. Accelerated processing is priced separately at $100 next-day, $200 same-day and $400 for two-hour service, name reservation is $10, a Certificate of Good Standing is $10, and foreign LLC registration is $150.
Filed with the Corporation Commission, not the Secretary of State. Arizona LLC formation documents go to the Arizona Corporation Commission at azcc.gov; the Arizona Secretary of State handles trade names and trademarks, not LLC formation.
Newspaper publication within 60 days outside Maricopa and Pima. If your statutory agent's street address is in a county of 800,000 or fewer residents you must publish notice three consecutive times in a local newspaper within 60 days of approval and pay that newspaper's rate; the state charges nothing and publishes no price.
Do not publish before approval. The Commission instructs filers not to publish until the Articles are approved for filing, since publishing early can force you to pay a newspaper twice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Edmond Hui · Founder, MyStateLLC
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.