Indiana LLC filing: the cheapest report in the country to maintain, and the deadline most owners miss

Every figure on this page comes from the Indiana Secretary of State and its INBiz filing portal, not an aggregator. Indiana is one of the cheapest states in the country to keep an LLC in good standing, and the reason is a genuine oddity: its ongoing report is not annual. The Business Entity Report is due every two years, at $32 online, which works out to about $16 a year, a maintenance cost almost no other state beats. That same feature is the trap. Owners are trained by every other state to file annually, they set a yearly reminder, and Indiana’s real deadline falls every other year in the anniversary month. Miss it long enough and the state administratively dissolves the company, which drops its good standing and its liability shield until it is reinstated. The discount and the trap are the same fact.

Forming the company

Formation is a single filing at a low fee through the state’s portal.

Indiana forms an LLC on Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State through the INBiz portal for $95 online, or $100 by mail.

You create an Indiana LLC by filing the Articles of Organization with the Indiana Secretary of State, almost always through the INBiz portal at inbiz.in.gov, for a $95 fee online or $100 by mail. Online filing adds a small processing surcharge, so confirm the exact total at the INBiz fee calculator before you file. The articles name the LLC, its principal office, and a registered agent, who must have an Indiana street address. Online formations are typically processed within a few business days. There is no separate publication requirement and no minimum tax due at formation, so the $95 is effectively the full cost of standing the entity up with the state.

The report that is biennial, not annual

Here is the feature that saves money and the one that costs owners their good standing, and they are the same feature.

Indiana’s Business Entity Report is due every two years, not every year, at $32 online or $50 by mail, about $16 a year.

Indiana does not use an annual report. It uses a Business Entity Report filed every two years through INBiz, at $32 online or $50 by mail. Averaged out, that is roughly $16 a year, among the lowest ongoing state costs in the country and cheaper than the annual-report states around it. The report itself is light, confirming the agent and basic company information. On cost alone, Indiana’s biennial cycle is a real advantage: half the filings, half the fees, and fewer moments each cycle to get something wrong.

The advantage inverts at the deadline, because the cadence is the thing people get wrong.

The report is due by the end of the LLC’s formation anniversary month every other year, and the two-year rhythm is exactly why owners miss it.

The report is due by the last day of the month in which the LLC was formed, in every second year, and the Secretary of State accepts it up to 90 days early. An LLC formed in August files every other August. The problem is human: owners coming from annual-report states set an annual reminder, file in the off year when nothing is due, and then miss the on-year deadline because their calendar and the state’s calendar are out of sync. The unusual interval, the very thing that makes Indiana cheap, is what makes the deadline easy to forget, and the miss does not announce itself, because nothing was due the year before.

What a missed report actually costs

The late fee is not the real cost. The lapse in the shield is.

A missed Business Entity Report leads to administrative dissolution, and a dissolved LLC loses its good standing and its liability protection until it is reinstated.

If the report goes unfiled long enough, the Secretary of State administratively dissolves the LLC. A dissolved entity is no longer in good standing, and during that gap the liability shield an owner formed the company to get is compromised: claims that arise while the company is dissolved can reach through to the owner, and the weak charging-order protection covered on the protection page is on the shakiest possible footing when the entity itself is not in good standing. Indiana allows reinstatement, and the company can be brought back, but reinstatement does not always cleanly erase the exposure that arose during the lapse. So the true price of forgetting a $32 report is not the reinstatement fee. It is a window, potentially months long, in which the protection the entity was supposed to provide was not there. The cheapest state to maintain has one of the easiest deadlines to miss, and the cost of the miss is measured in exposure, not dollars.

One more thing series owners should know

If you run a series LLC, the reporting math is even more favorable, with one filing for the whole structure.

A series LLC files one Business Entity Report for the master company, and the individual series do not file separate reports.

Indiana’s series LLC, covered on the structure and cost page, is formed as a single master entity, and it is the master that files the biennial Business Entity Report. The individual series inside it do not each file their own report, so a structure holding many properties in many series still has one state report and one $32 fee every two years. That keeps the ongoing state cost of a multi-property series structure remarkably low, though it does nothing to relax the internal-shield requirements of separate records and accounting that make the series real. The reporting is cheap; the bookkeeping discipline is not optional.

The bottom line

An Indiana LLC forms on Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State through INBiz for $95 online or $100 by mail, with an Indiana-address registered agent required.

The ongoing Business Entity Report is biennial, not annual, at $32 online or $50 by mail, about $16 a year and among the lowest maintenance costs in the country.

The report is due by the end of the formation anniversary month every other year, and the two-year cadence is the reason owners on annual reminders miss it.

A missed report leads to administrative dissolution, which drops good standing and the liability shield until reinstatement, so the real cost of the miss is exposure, not the late fee.

A series LLC files one report for the master entity and the individual series do not file separately, keeping a multi-property structure’s state cost very low.

What this page does not cover

This page is about fees, forms, and deadlines. How creditors reach a member’s interest, the weak charging order, and the Brant v. Krilich dissolution risk are on the protection page. What Indiana’s law lets your operating agreement do, and the trap that the flexibility only takes effect in writing, is on the governance page. Indiana’s series LLC, the county income-tax layer, and the absence of any real estate transfer tax are on the structure and cost page.

Last verified August 2026.