Your Colorado LLC Is Doing Business in Another State
The short answer. You keep one LLC. It stays registered in Colorado, which charges $25 a year to keep it in good standing, 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, 42 cost more in year-one registration than Colorado's own first-year total of $75, and 5 cost less. 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 Colorado
When the Annual Report is due. In the entity's "Periodic report month"; the report "can be filed two months prior to the Periodic Report month or two months after without any penalty," and "the report is due by the last day of the second month following the Periodic Report Month"
Every Colorado fee behind these figures is broken out on what an LLC costs in Colorado.
What a second state adds
These are the states closest to Colorado’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 ($75) |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Dakota | $750 | $55/yr | $675 more |
| Texas | $750 | None | $675 more |
| Massachusetts | $500 | $520/yr | $425 more |
| Iowa | $100 | $15/yr | $25 more |
| Idaho | $100 | None | $25 more |
| Ohio | $99 | None | $24 more |
| Kentucky | $90 | from $190/yr | $15 more |
| California | $70 | $810/yr | $5 less |
| Montana | $70 | None | $5 less |
| Utah | $59 | $18/yr | $16 less |
| Hawaii | $50 | $12.50/yr | $25 less |
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 Colorado's own costs
Our notes, from Colorado's published fee schedules and statutes.
Colorado is genuinely cheap to form and maintain: Articles of Organization cost $50.00, can only be filed online, and post in real time. The recurring cost is the $25.00 Periodic Report, which rose from $10.00 to $25.00 on July 1, 2024. Certificates of good standing, certificates of fact and certified copies are free online, and a name reservation is $25.00. The main money risk is the $50.00 Periodic Report Late Filing Penalty, twice the report fee itself, followed by a $100.00 Statement Curing Delinquency if you let the entity go delinquent.
Late fee is double the report fee. Colorado's Periodic Report costs $25.00 but the Late Filing Penalty is $50.00, so a missed deadline triples the cost of the filing to $75.00.
Noncompliant to Delinquent in 60 days. After the filing window closes the entity becomes Noncompliant, and 60 days later it becomes Delinquent, at which point a $100.00 Statement Curing Delinquency (or $100.00 Reinstatement) is required on top of the report fee and late fee.
Report fee more than doubled in 2024. The Periodic Report fee went from $10.00 to $25.00 effective July 1, 2024, so any Colorado cost figure sourced before that date understates the annual maintenance cost.
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.