LLC structure and taxes by state: three states out of fifty-one keep your name off the record

Anonymity is the most heavily marketed feature in the LLC industry, and among the fifty-one states verified here, three deliver it. Delaware, Wyoming, and New Mexico keep member and manager names off the formation record. The other forty-eight put somebody on a public document, most of them every single year, and no filing choice inside those states changes it.

For a single state’s full breakdown, see the state directory.

Three states out of fifty-one keep your name off the record. In the other forty-eight, the anonymity being sold to you does not exist.

Even the three come with edges. New Mexico hides your name and then requires the articles to state whether the company may operate as a single-member LLC, which publishes the one structural fact a creditor’s lawyer actually wants. Wyoming’s annual report carries the name of whoever files it, so if the beneficial owner files, the beneficial owner is on a public document. Delaware’s certificate names only the company and its registered agent, and Delaware itself frames the result as privacy from a casual search rather than from legal process.

This page compares what each state’s entity structure costs and discloses. Every figure comes from that state’s own statute or schedule, verified state by state, and each row links to the full page where the sources are named. All fifty states and the District of Columbia are verified from their own law. Where a figure was not verified, the cell says so, which is why the transfer tax table below has more blanks than numbers.

Privacy: who ends up on the public record

State	Formation record	Recurring disclosure
Delaware	Company and registered agent only	None. No annual report at all
Arizona	Members, or managers plus any 20% owner	None. No annual report at all
Wyoming	No member or manager names	The annual report names whoever files it
New Mexico	No names, but single-member status is public	None. No recurring report
Ohio	Not verified here	None, by absence of any annual report
Missouri	Organizer and registered agent; no member roster	None. No annual or biennial report at all
South Carolina	Registered agent; no member roster	None for a standard LLC
Alabama	Registered agent; no member roster	None. Alabama dropped the annual report in 2024
Oklahoma	Registered agent; no member roster	Annual certificate; no member roster
Mississippi	Registered agent; no member roster	Free annual report, required despite being free
Idaho	Registered agent and a governor; no member roster	Free annual report, required despite being free
Virginia	Registered agent and organizer; no member roster	$50 fee, but no report form
Minnesota	Organizer and registered office; no member roster	Free annual renewal
Indiana	Organizer and registered agent; no member roster at formation	Biennial report, every two years
Iowa	Registered agent; no member roster	Biennial report, every two years
Kansas	Resident agent; no member roster	Biennial report, every two years
Nebraska	Registered agent; no member roster, but formation must be published in a newspaper	Biennial report, every two years
District of Columbia	Registered agent; no member roster	Biennial report names a governor
Utah	Registered agent and management structure; no member roster	$18 annual renewal
Kentucky	Registered agent, and the annual report lists managers or members	$15 annual report
Wisconsin	Registered agent; no member roster	$25 annual report, due the end of the formation quarter
Arkansas	Registered agent and an officer for franchise-tax purposes	Annual franchise-tax report names an officer
West Virginia	Registered agent; no member roster	Annual report
South Dakota	Ordinary disclosure; the secrecy is a trust feature	Annual report
North Dakota	Registered agent; no member roster	Annual report
Rhode Island	Registered agent; no member roster	Annual report
Hawaii	Registered agent; no member roster	Annual report
Vermont	Registered agent; no member roster	Annual report
Nevada	Managers public under NRS 86.263	Annual list of managers, every year
Alaska	Owners disclosed	Biennial report lists managers or members, including 5% owners
Pennsylvania	Organizer and registered office; the annual report names one governor	Annual report names one manager or member
Florida	Owners disclosed	Annual report names members or managers
Texas	Owners disclosed	Public Information Report, every May
Connecticut	Registered agent; no member roster	Annual report
New Hampshire	Registered agent; no member roster	Annual report names managers
Massachusetts	Resident agent and authorized signatories; not a privacy state	Annual report on the formation anniversary
Maine	Registered agent; no member roster	Annual report
California	Owners disclosed	Statement of Information names managers or members
Montana	Owners disclosed	Annual report names members or managers
Tennessee	Organizer and registered agent; articles are public but member disclosure is limited	Annual report, priced per member
Georgia	Owners disclosed	Annual registration names officers or managers
North Carolina	A member, manager, or organizer is named	Annual report
Maryland	Resident agent and management structure; no member roster	$300 annual report every year
Illinois	No entity privacy; the land trust is the tool	Annual report
Louisiana	Registered agent, and the initial report names members and managers	Annual report names members and managers
Michigan	Organizer and resident agent; no member roster at formation	Annual statement collects member and manager information
Oregon	Registered agent, and manager-managed articles name the managers	Annual report, and Oregon’s record is relatively open
New Jersey	Owners disclosed	Annual report
Colorado	Organizer and registered agent; no member roster	Periodic report
Washington	Registered agent and executor; no member roster	$70 annual report
New York	Publication, not disclosure, is the burden	Biennial statement

Two states deserve their own line. South Dakota is famous for secrecy and the fame is earned, but it attaches to trusts, with permanent sealing and quiet trusts, not to LLCs; the South Dakota LLC is an ordinary entity with ordinary disclosure. Illinois offers real privacy through the land trust, an Illinois invention that puts a trustee’s name on the deed and keeps the beneficial owner off the record, with an LLC sitting behind it as beneficiary. Neither is entity anonymity, and both get sold as though they were.

South Dakota’s secrecy is a trust feature. Illinois privacy is a land trust feature. Neither one is a property of the LLC.

Two limits apply everywhere and erase most of what remains. First, foreign registration: the privacy is a feature of your formation state’s filing requirements, and the first form you file in a disclosure state asks what your formation state never did. A Delaware LLC operating in a disclosure state has no anonymity where it operates. Second, federal beneficial ownership, which under a March 2025 interim rule currently exempts domestic entities, a rule that has been in flux long enough that several state pages carry standing warnings about it. New York went further and built its own regime, and the result is the opposite of what nearly every 2025 law firm alert predicted: after a December 2025 veto, the New York LLC Transparency Act currently reaches only LLCs formed outside the United States. The full picture is on the anonymous LLC page.

Series LLCs: who offers them, who refuses, who taxes them

State	Series	The detail that matters
Delaware	Invented them	Three kinds, and one of them shields nothing
Texas	Since 2009	Registered and protected series added in 2021
Nevada	NRS 86.296	Created in the operating agreement, no filing, no per-series fee
Wyoming	W.S. 17-29-211	$10 per series
Illinois	Public certificate model	$400 to form, $50 per series per year, each series on the public record
South Dakota	SDCL 47-34A-701	Certificate of designation required, a public filing per series
Ohio	ORC 1706.76, since 2022	Ohio was the fifteenth state to allow them
Montana	Allowed	$50 per series member named in the Articles
Florida	New July 1, 2026	Protected series under Fla. Stat. 605.2101, weeks old
Missouri	Yes	Series of members, managers, or interests authorized
Tennessee	Yes	Series of members, managers, or assets authorized
Indiana	Yes	Series in a separate article, established in the operating agreement
Alabama	Yes	Protected series authorized
Oklahoma	Yes	Protected and registered series both authorized
Utah	Yes	Series authorized under Part 12
Iowa	Yes	Protected series authorized
Arkansas	Yes	Protected series under a separate act
Kansas	Yes	Series authorized, with a 2025 single-taxpayer election
Virginia	Yes	Protected series, unanimous consent to establish
Colorado	Yes	Protected series, adopted 2021
Georgia	Recognizes, will not form	Registers a foreign series, creates none
California	Will not form, will tax	Every foreign series doing business there owes its own $800
Alaska, New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Arizona, Minnesota, Washington, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Massachusetts, Maryland, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oregon, Connecticut, Mississippi, Nebraska, Idaho, West Virginia, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, North Dakota, Vermont, District of Columbia	None	No series statute

The price spread is the largest of any structural feature on this page. Nevada creates a series in the operating agreement for nothing. Wyoming charges $10. Illinois charges $400 up front and $50 per series per year, so a ten-series Illinois LLC pays $575 annually. California charges $800 per series per year to series it refuses to create, so five series operating there owe $4,000 before earning a dollar. And New Mexico, with no series statute at all, answers the same problem with separate LLCs at $50 each, once, forever.

California will not let you form a series and will bill each one $800 a year for doing business there. Refusing to create a thing is not the same as refusing to tax it.

One open question runs under the entire table, and nearly every series state’s page carries it: no court has decided whether a charging order against one member reaches a single series or the whole structure, and the federal tax treatment of series still rests on proposed regulations from 2010 that were never finalized. Ohio’s statute is well drafted and untested, which is a different thing from safe. Florida’s is three weeks old. Georgia’s position is the strangest of all, since a foreign series registered there is asking Georgia courts to honor walls the Georgia legislature never created. The doctrine is on the series LLC page.

What the state charges the entity for existing

State	Entity-level cost	Note
Wyoming	None	No income, corporate, or franchise tax
South Dakota	None	Bank franchise tax reaches chartered banks only
Alaska	None	No income tax and no statewide sales tax
Florida	None on pass-throughs	C-corp election pays 5.5% on Florida income
Texas	$0 under $2.65M	Franchise margin tax; filing required regardless
Nevada	$0 under $4M	Commerce Tax on gross receipts above that
North Carolina	None on pass-throughs	Flat personal income tax, declining on schedule
Arizona	$0	No annual report and no franchise tax
Minnesota	$0	The renewal is free, but a growing multi-member LLC owes an entity-level minimum fee
Ohio	Commercial Activity Tax	Gross receipts, with an exclusion threshold
New Mexico	Gross receipts tax	Reaches services, including intercompany fees
Missouri	$0	One of four states with no recurring report; recurring state cost is zero
South Carolina	$0	No annual report or fee unless the LLC is taxed as a corporation
Alabama	$0	No annual report, and small LLCs are exempt from the business privilege tax since 2024
Louisiana	$0	The corporate franchise tax was repealed in 2026; no entity-level tax on LLCs
Oregon	$0 under $1M	The Corporate Activity Tax hits gross receipts over $1 million, even in a loss year; no franchise tax
Oklahoma	$0	The franchise tax was repealed in 2024; no entity-level tax
Connecticut	$0	The business entity tax was repealed in 2020; no entity-level tax on a standard LLC
Utah	$0	No franchise tax; the $18 renewal is the only recurring state cost
Iowa	$0	No franchise tax; the biennial report is the only recurring state cost
Mississippi	$0	No franchise tax on a pass-through LLC; the annual report is free
Kansas	$0	The franchise tax was repealed in 2011; no entity-level tax
Nebraska	$0	No franchise tax; the biennial report is the only recurring state cost
Idaho	$0	No franchise tax; the annual report is free
West Virginia	$0	No franchise tax, though some cities levy a business-and-occupation tax on gross receipts
Hawaii	$0	No franchise tax, but a landlord owes General Excise Tax on gross rents, 4% to 4.5%
New Hampshire	$0 under $298k	No franchise tax, but a business over about $298,000 in receipts owes the 7.5% Business Profits Tax at the entity level
Maine	$0	No franchise tax; the annual report is the only recurring state cost
North Dakota	$0	No franchise tax, though a farmland LLC faces a separate corporate-farming regime
Vermont	$0	No franchise tax; Vermont’s structural feature is the blockchain-based LLC, not series
Pennsylvania	$7 a year	A $7 annual report, new since 2025; no franchise tax
Indiana	About $16 a year	A biennial report at $32, so about $16 a year; no franchise tax
Colorado	$25	A $25 periodic-report fee, raised from $10 in 2024; no franchise tax
Wisconsin	$25 a year	A $25 annual report; no franchise tax
Michigan	$25 a year	A $25 annual statement; no franchise tax on a general LLC
Virginia	$50	An annual registration fee with no report form; the fee is the whole obligation
Washington	$70	A $70 annual report; the widely published $60 is stale
Arkansas	$150 a year	A flat $150 franchise tax every year regardless of income; a protected series avoids multiplying it
Kentucky	$175 minimum	The Limited Liability Entity Tax, a $175 minimum on Kentucky gross receipts over $100,000, filed even by a disregarded single-member LLC
District of Columbia	$250 minimum	The Unincorporated Business Franchise Tax, 8.25% at the entity level with a $250 minimum, and a rental LLC pays it even at a loss
Maryland	$300 a year	A $300 annual report due every year regardless of activity; no franchise tax
Delaware	$300 franchise tax	Plus gross receipts tax on in-state revenue
Rhode Island	$400 minimum	A $400 minimum annual tax to the Division of Taxation, owed regardless of income and separate from the annual report; a multi-LLC structure multiplies it
Tennessee	$400+ a year	A per-member annual report ($300 minimum) plus a $100 minimum franchise-and-excise tax
Massachusetts	$500 a year	The most expensive state to keep an LLC, $500 every year, and Massachusetts sends no reminders
New Jersey	Per member	Reported at $150 per member per year
California	$800 minimum	Plus $900 to $11,790 on gross receipts above $250,000

California is the outlier by a distance, and the reason is the stacking: a business with no profit at all can owe $12,590. Three states tax gross receipts rather than income, which catches thin-margin operations that an income tax would spare, and New Mexico’s version reaches services and intercompany management fees in ways sales-tax thinking will miss entirely. New Jersey’s per-member charge is the only one on the list that scales with how many owners you have, which makes admitting a member a tax event in a small way most operating agreements never mention.

Three states tax revenue rather than profit. A company can lose money all year in Ohio, New Mexico, or California and still owe.

Moving property in: the tax nobody prices first

This is the most consequential unpriced decision on the site. Deeding real property into an LLC is the standard asset protection move, and what it costs ranges from nothing to several percent of the property’s value depending entirely on where the property sits.

State	Transfer tax on moving property in
Wyoming	None
Texas	None. Recording fees only
Alaska	None
Arizona	None, barred by the state constitution; only a flat recording fee
Colorado	None statewide; about a dozen resort towns kept grandfathered taxes
Indiana	None; only a small county sales-disclosure fee
Missouri	None
Louisiana	None statewide; New Orleans charges a flat documentary fee
Oregon	None except Washington County
Utah	None; only a flat county recording fee
Mississippi	None
Kansas	None
Idaho	None
North Dakota	None
Alabama	0.1% deed recording tax
Kentucky	0.1% deed transfer tax
Oklahoma	0.15% documentary stamp tax
Iowa	0.16% transfer tax
Nebraska	0.225% documentary stamp tax
West Virginia	About 0.22% state, more with county
Illinois	$0.50 per $500 state, and an assumed mortgage is excluded
South Dakota	About $0.50 per $500
Nevada	$1.95 to $2.55 per $500, exempt for same-ownership with an affidavit
Florida	$0.70 per $100, and it reaches the mortgage
Virginia	0.25% recordation, but a deed into your own LLC is exempt if you keep at least half
Wisconsin	0.3% transfer fee, and contributing land for membership interests is taxable
Minnesota	0.33% deed tax
Arkansas	0.33% transfer tax
South Carolina	0.37% deed recording fee
Maine	0.44% transfer tax, split between buyer and seller
Tennessee	0.37% realty transfer tax
Massachusetts	0.456% deeds excise, and it reaches transfers of a nominee-trust interest
Rhode Island	About 0.46% conveyance tax, more over $800,000
Michigan	About 0.86% combined, but selling the entity avoids it and instead uncaps the property tax
Hawaii	Graduated conveyance tax up to about 1.25%, higher for investment property
New Hampshire	1.5% combined, split between buyer and seller, and moving property into your own LLC can trigger it
Connecticut	0.75% to 2.25% conveyance tax, and selling the entity is taxed at 1.11% too
District of Columbia	2.2% to 2.9% combined, and transferring a controlling interest in a DC-real-estate LLC is taxed too
Maryland	0.5% state plus county and recordation, often 1.5% or more, with a conditional exemption for moving property into your own LLC
Pennsylvania	1% state, often 2% with local, and transferring 90% of a real estate company is taxed too
Vermont	0.5% on a home, but 3.4% on investment property
Washington	Up to 3% state REET plus local, and a 50% entity transfer is taxed with a 36-month look-back
Delaware	Up to 4%, highest in the country, but contribution to your own entity is exempt
California, New York, New Jersey, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Montana, New Mexico	Not verified here. Price it with the county before recording

Two states demonstrate why this cannot be reasoned about from general principles. Move a $1,000,000 building with a $600,000 mortgage into your own Florida LLC and the documentary stamp tax reaches the mortgage balance, roughly $4,200, even though you owned the property before and own it after. Do the identical thing in Illinois and the assumed mortgage is excluded from the base by statute. Same transaction, same ownership, and the tax turns entirely on which state’s recorder stamps the deed.

Florida taxes the mortgage you bring into your own LLC. Illinois excludes it by statute. The transaction is identical; the bill is not.

Delaware is the instructive third case. It has the highest state transfer tax in the country at up to 4 percent, and contributing property into a wholly owned LLC is exempt, so the headline rate never touches the move most owners make. The catch is on the other side: that exemption is carved out of the tax on changing who owns the LLC, so the structure is cheap to build and expensive to rearrange. California’s danger is different again and is not a transfer tax at all: moving property into an entity can trigger a change-in-ownership reassessment that resets the assessed value Proposition 13 has been holding down for decades, a cost that dwarfs any stamp tax and arrives every year thereafter.

Eight of fifty-one states above have no verified figure here. That is deliberate and it is the honest state of the research: transfer tax mechanics are county-administered in most states, and this site does not publish rates it has not read from the source. Each of those eight state pages says the same thing in its own words and sends you to the county recorder and to counsel before the deed records. A focused verification pass is queued, and its results will land here and on a dedicated comparison page.

The distinctive features worth knowing about

A few states offer structures the rest do not. Wyoming was first in the country to let a decentralized autonomous organization register as an LLC, and also offers a close LLC variant with tighter transfer restrictions. Delaware forms statutory trusts for $500 and permits professional LLCs. Montana’s absence of any state sales tax created the most-searched structure in the country, the Montana LLC that owns and registers vehicles, which is legitimate for a Montana resident with a Montana vehicle and is use-tax evasion when the vehicle lives in another state, a distinction home states pursue with back taxes, penalties, and in some cases criminal charges. New York’s publication requirement stands alone as a pure cost with no informational purpose: six weeks in two newspapers, $230 to more than $1,950 depending on county, applying to LLCs while corporations are exempt. And most states now permit conversion and domestication, so a company can enter or leave as the same legal entity rather than dissolving and re-forming, which the restructuring guide covers.

The bottom line

Three of fifty-one verified states keep owners off the formation record, and all three have edges: New Mexico publishes single-member status, Wyoming’s annual report names the filer, and Delaware calls its own product privacy from casual search rather than from process. Twenty-two states offer series LLCs at prices from nothing to $800 per series per year, and no court anywhere has tested how a charging order interacts with one. California can charge a profitless company $12,590, and three states tax revenue rather than income. Moving property into your own LLC costs nothing in Wyoming, Texas, and Alaska, reaches the mortgage in Florida, is exempt from a 4 percent rate in Delaware, and can reset a Proposition 13 basis in California. And half the transfer tax picture is still blank here, because the alternative to a verified number is not an estimate, it is a blank.

Last verified July 2026.