Your Indiana LLC Is Doing Business in Another State
The short answer. You keep one LLC. It stays registered in Indiana, which charges $15.50 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, 29 cost more in year-one registration than Indiana's own first-year total of $110.50, and 18 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 Indiana
When the Biennial Report is due. Every other year, in the anniversary month of the LLC's formation
Every Indiana fee behind these figures is broken out on what an LLC costs in Indiana.
What a second state adds
These are the states closest to Indiana’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 ($110.50) |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Dakota | $750 | $55/yr | $639.50 more |
| Texas | $750 | None | $639.50 more |
| Massachusetts | $500 | $520/yr | $389.50 more |
| Connecticut | $120 | $80/yr | $9.50 more |
| Kansas | $115 | $45/yr | $4.50 more |
| South Carolina | $110 | None | $0.50 less |
| Missouri | $105 | None | $5.50 less |
| Colorado | $100 | $25/yr | $10.50 less |
| Iowa | $100 | $15/yr | $10.50 less |
| Idaho | $100 | None | $10.50 less |
| Maryland | $100 | $300/yr | $10.50 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 Indiana's own costs
Our notes, from Indiana's published fee schedules and statutes.
An Indiana LLC costs $95 to form online through INBiz or $100 to form on paper with State Form 49459, making Indiana one of the few states where the paper channel is the more expensive one. The recurring cost is a Business Entity Report every second year, $31 online or $50 by mail, which works out to roughly $15.50 per year and is among the cheapest ongoing state maintenance in the country. Optional extras are modest: $10 to reserve a name, $26 for a Certificate of Existence ordered from INBiz, and $0 for certified copies, which the Secretary of State provides free through the INBiz Certified Copies Request. Indiana levies no franchise tax or minimum entity tax on a default-classified LLC, so for most single-member Indiana LLCs the true state cost is the $95 formation fee plus about $15.50 a year.
The report is biennial, not annual. Indiana's Business Entity Report is due only every other year, in the anniversary month of formation, so an LLC formed in July 2026 owes nothing until July 2028. Filers who assume an annual deadline often stop watching after the second year and get caught by a two-year gap that ends in administrative dissolution.
Filing on paper costs more in both directions. Paper costs $100 to form versus $95 online, and $50 per Business Entity Report versus $31 online, a $19 premium every two years for using the mail. The Secretary of State's own reinstatement page also warns that "most paper reinstatements are rejected."
Reinstatement costs far more than the missed report. Restoring an administratively dissolved Indiana LLC requires a $30 reinstatement fee plus the fee for every Business Entity Report year still owed, and it cannot start until the Department of Revenue issues a Certificate of Clearance, which the Secretary of State says takes at least four weeks. After 5 years of dissolution, online reinstatement is no longer available at all.
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.