Utah LLC filing: the cheapest LLC in the country to keep, $18 a year, and the deadline that low fee makes easy to miss

Every figure on this page comes from the Utah Division of Corporations, not an aggregator. Utah is the cheapest state in the country to keep an LLC alive. Formation runs about $59, and the annual renewal is $18, the lowest recurring fee any state charges, with no franchise tax on top of it. That is a genuine advantage for anyone holding several entities. The risk in Utah is not the cost, which is trivial; it is the deadline, because the renewal is tied to each LLC’s own anniversary month rather than a single statewide date, and a missed renewal does not just cost a late fee, it leads to administrative dissolution, which drops the liability shield the entity exists to provide.

Forming the company

Formation is a single low-cost filing through the state’s online portal.

Utah forms an LLC on a Certificate of Organization filed through the OneStop portal for about $59, with same-day processing.

You create a Utah LLC by filing the Certificate of Organization with the Division of Corporations through the OneStop business portal, for a fee in the neighborhood of $59, usually processed the same day online. Confirm the current fee at the portal before filing, because it has shifted with recent fee schedules. The certificate names the company, its registered agent, and the management structure, member-managed or manager-managed. Utah requires the registered agent to have a physical Utah address. There is no publication requirement and no minimum tax at formation, so the filing fee is effectively the full cost of standing the entity up.

The $18 renewal, and why the low fee is a trap

Here is the feature that makes Utah cheap and the reason the cheapness is deceptive.

Utah’s annual renewal is $18, the lowest of any state, and with no franchise tax it is the entire recurring state cost of the entity.

Every Utah LLC files an annual renewal with a $18 fee, and that is the whole recurring obligation, because Utah imposes no franchise tax. Combined with the roughly $59 formation fee, Utah has the lowest total entity-maintenance cost in the country, well below states with three-figure annual reports or franchise taxes. For an investor holding multiple LLCs, the per-entity cost is close to a rounding error.

The catch is in when the renewal is due.

The renewal is due the last day of the LLC’s formation-anniversary month, a date unique to each entity, which is exactly why owners miss it.

Utah does not use a single statewide deadline like an April 15. Each LLC’s renewal is due the last day of the month in which it was formed, so an LLC organized in March renews every March and one organized in September renews every September. For an owner with several entities, that is several different dates to track, none of them prompted by a familiar tax deadline, and the trivial $18 fee does little to make the date memorable. The result is that Utah renewals get missed not because the fee is burdensome but because the deadline is easy to overlook, and the consequence is out of proportion to the fee.

What a missed renewal costs

The low fee masks a real consequence, and it reaches the shield.

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

If the renewal goes unfiled, the state issues a dissolution warning and, if it stays unfiled, administratively dissolves the LLC. A dissolved entity is no longer in good standing, and during that gap the liability shield the owner formed the company to get is compromised, so a claim arising while the company is dissolved can be harder to keep away from the owner. Utah allows reinstatement on payment of the missed renewal plus a reinstatement fee, and the company can be brought back, but the exposure that arose during the lapse is not always cleanly erased. So the true cost of forgetting an $18 renewal is not the fee or even the reinstatement charge; it is a window in which the protection the entity was supposed to provide was not reliably there. The protection page covers why an entity out of good standing is a weak place to be when a creditor appears. The cheapest LLC in the country to keep still has to be kept.

Series and multiple entities

For an owner using Utah’s series option, the renewal math stays simple.

A Utah series LLC renews as a single entity, so the individual series do not each file their own renewal.

Utah’s series LLC, covered on the structure and cost page, is a single entity that establishes series internally, and it is the parent LLC that files the annual renewal. The individual series do not each renew separately, so a structure holding several properties in series still pays one $18 renewal, which keeps a multi-property Utah plan about as cheap to maintain as a single LLC. That, combined with the absence of a transfer tax on moving the properties in, is what makes Utah an inexpensive base for a holding structure, as long as the owner tracks the one renewal date that matters.

The bottom line

A Utah LLC forms on a Certificate of Organization filed through the OneStop portal for about $59, with a Utah-address registered agent required.

The annual renewal is $18, the lowest recurring LLC fee of any state, and with no franchise tax it is the entire recurring state cost.

The renewal is due the last day of the formation-anniversary month, a per-entity date rather than a fixed statewide one, which is why it is easy to miss.

A missed renewal leads to administrative dissolution, which drops good standing and the liability shield until reinstatement, so the real risk is the deadline, not the fee.

A series LLC renews once as a single entity, so a multi-property Utah structure stays cheap to maintain, provided the one renewal date is tracked.

What this page does not cover

This page is about fees, forms, and deadlines. How creditors reach a member’s interest, the foreclosable charging order, and the missing entireties shield are on the protection page. What Utah’s law lets your operating agreement do, and the fiduciary duties it will not let you waive, are on the governance page. Utah’s flat income tax, the absence of a transfer tax, and the series LLC are on the structure and cost page.

Last verified August 2026.