Arkansas LLC filing: $45 to form, then a flat $150 franchise tax every LLC owes, income or not

Every figure on this page comes from the Arkansas Secretary of State and the Department of Finance and Administration, not an aggregator. Arkansas is cheap to form, $45 online, but it is not cheap to keep, because every Arkansas LLC pays a flat $150 franchise tax each year, due May 1, whether or not it earned a dollar. That fixed cost is the thing to plan around: it makes Arkansas more expensive to maintain than the truly cheap states, and it multiplies across a multi-property structure of separate LLCs, which is exactly why the protected series matters here.

Forming the company

Formation is a single, inexpensive filing.

Arkansas forms an LLC on a Certificate of Organization filed with the Secretary of State for $45 online.

You create an Arkansas LLC by filing the Certificate of Organization with the Secretary of State for $45 online, or $50 by mail, naming the company and a registered agent with an Arkansas address. The form also asks for at least one officer’s name for franchise tax purposes, a hint of the recurring obligation to come. There is no publication requirement, so $45 is the full cost of forming.

The franchise tax every LLC owes

Here is the recurring cost, and it is unavoidable.

Every Arkansas LLC pays a flat $150 franchise tax each year, due May 1, regardless of income or activity.

Under the Arkansas franchise tax law, an LLC formed under the state’s LLC act pays a flat $150 franchise tax every year, filed with the Secretary of State and due by May 1. The tax does not scale with income and does not depend on doing business: a dormant Arkansas LLC that earned nothing still owes the $150. Missing it brings penalties and interest, and prolonged nonpayment costs the LLC its good standing, which ends the liability protection the protection page describes. So the Arkansas compliance picture is a cheap $45 formation followed by a firm $150 every May 1, and the $150, not the formation, is the number that matters over the life of the company. That fixed per-entity cost has a direct consequence for anyone holding more than one property.

Because the $150 is charged per LLC, a multi-property structure of separate LLCs multiplies the franchise tax, while a protected series can consolidate it.

An investor who forms a separate Arkansas LLC for each property pays $150 for each of them every year, so ten properties in ten LLCs is $1,500 a year in franchise tax alone. A protected series, described on the structure and cost page, is generally a single entity, which can mean a single $150 franchise tax covering several properties in walled-off cells. That makes the choice between separate LLCs and a protected series partly a cost decision in Arkansas, more than in a state with no franchise tax, and it is worth running the numbers before defaulting to a separate LLC for every property. The trade-off is that a protected series concentrates the properties in one entity, so the liability walls between series have to be respected in practice for the structure to hold.

The bottom line

An Arkansas LLC forms on a Certificate of Organization filed with the Secretary of State for $45 online, with an Arkansas-address registered agent.

Every Arkansas LLC pays a flat $150 franchise tax each year, due May 1, regardless of income or activity, and missing it costs good standing.

The $150, not the $45 formation, is the number that matters over the life of the company, and it makes Arkansas more expensive to maintain than the cheap states.

Because the franchise tax is charged per LLC, a multi-property structure of separate LLCs multiplies it, while a protected series can consolidate it into one.

The structure choice in Arkansas is partly a cost decision, so run the franchise-tax math before forming a separate LLC for every property.

What this page does not cover

This page is about fees, forms, and deadlines. How creditors reach a member’s interest, the constitutional homestead, and the charging order are on the protection page. The 2021 uniform act, its fiduciary floor, and the sweep of older LLCs are on the governance page. Arkansas’s falling income tax, the protected series, and the flat franchise tax are on the structure and cost page.

Last verified August 2026.