Your Mississippi LLC Is Doing Business in Another State
The short answer. You keep one LLC. It stays registered in Mississippi, which charges no recurring state filing fee, though the LLC keeps whatever obligations Mississippi 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 Mississippi'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 Mississippi
When the Annual Report is due. can be filed any time on or after January 1st of each year and are due by April 15th of that year
Every Mississippi fee behind these figures is broken out on what an LLC costs in Mississippi.
What a second state adds
These are the states closest to Mississippi’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 Mississippi's own costs
Our notes, from Mississippi's published fee schedules and statutes.
Mississippi is close to the cheapest state to run a domestic LLC in: $50 once for the F0100 Certificate of Formation, then a $0 annual report every year by April 15. The catch is entirely on the foreign side, an out-of-state LLC pays $250 to register (F0200) and $250 again every year for its annual report (F0208), where the domestic version is free. Annual reports must be filed online; there is no paper option. Other fees are small: $25 to reserve a name (F0110), $10 to change a registered agent or office, $50 to reinstate a dissolved domestic LLC (F0109) versus $100 for a foreign one (F0209). Online filings are processed the same day, sometimes within minutes; the SOS warns paper registrations take significantly longer.
Foreign LLCs pay $250 a year, domestic LLCs pay $0. Mississippi's domestic LLC annual report (form F0108) is free, but the foreign LLC annual report (form F0208) is $250 every year, on top of the $250 registration fee (F0200). Any "Mississippi LLC costs nothing to maintain" claim applies only to domestic LLCs. Registering an out-of-state LLC here is one of the more expensive foreign-qualification arrangements in the country.
Free annual report, online only, and dissolution if skipped. All annual reports must be filed online (there is no paper route) and because the domestic fee is $0 there is no invoice to prompt you. The Secretary of State states that failure to file "may result in the administrative dissolution of the organization," and reinstating a domestic LLC then costs $50.
Annual report mailer scams. The Mississippi Secretary of State publishes standing warnings about misleading annual report mailers and certificate-of-existence solicitations sent to new businesses. Because the domestic annual report is genuinely free and filed on the SOS website, any letter asking for a payment to file it is worth verifying before paying.
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.