Your Hawaii LLC Is Doing Business in Another State
The short answer. You keep one LLC. It stays registered in Hawaii, which charges $12.50 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, 45 cost more in year-one registration than Hawaii's own first-year total of $62.50, and 2 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 Hawaii
When the Annual Report is due. By the end of the calendar quarter in which the LLC's registration date falls: registration date Jan 1, Mar 31 → due March 31; Apr 1, Jun 30 → due June 30; Jul 1, Sep 30 → due September 30; Oct 1, Dec 31 → due December 31, each year
Every Hawaii fee behind these figures is broken out on what an LLC costs in Hawaii.
What a second state adds
These are the states closest to Hawaii’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 ($62.50) |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Dakota | $750 | $55/yr | $687.50 more |
| Texas | $750 | None | $687.50 more |
| Massachusetts | $500 | $520/yr | $437.50 more |
| Colorado | $100 | $25/yr | $37.50 more |
| Iowa | $100 | $15/yr | $37.50 more |
| Ohio | $99 | None | $36.50 more |
| Kentucky | $90 | from $190/yr | $27.50 more |
| California | $70 | $810/yr | $7.50 more |
| Montana | $70 | None | $7.50 more |
| Utah | $59 | $18/yr | $3.50 less |
| Michigan | $50 | $25/yr | $12.50 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 Hawaii's own costs
Our notes, from Hawaii's published fee schedules and statutes.
Hawaii's Articles of Organization (Form LLC-1) cost $50, plus a $1.00 State Archives fee, with optional expedited review for $25. The recurring cost is unusually low: $12.50 to file the annual report online (the paper fee is $15.00), due by the end of the calendar quarter containing the LLC's registration date. The real cost driver is tax, not filings. Hawaii's General Excise Tax runs 4% of gross income (4.5% on Oahu with the county surcharge) and the GET license itself costs a one-time $20.
GET is charged on gross receipts, not profit. Hawaii's General Excise Tax is 4% of gross income statewide plus a 0.5% Oahu surcharge, so an LLC with revenue but no profit still owes GET. A far bigger annual cost than the $12.50 annual report.
Annual report deadline follows your registration quarter. The report is not due on a single statewide date: an LLC registered in August must file by September 30 every year, and DCCA adds a $10 late fee for each year delinquent.
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.