Idaho LLC filing: $100 to form, a free annual report, and the trap that free still means mandatory

Every figure on this page comes from the Idaho Secretary of State and the Tax Commission, not an aggregator. Idaho is one of the cheapest states to keep an LLC: $100 to form online and an annual report that costs nothing. That low cost is real, but the free report carries the same trap that catches owners in Mississippi, because free does not mean optional. The report is still required every year, tied to your formation anniversary, and missing it dissolves the company and opens a gap in the liability protection the protection page describes.

Forming the company

Formation is a single online filing.

Idaho forms an LLC on a Certificate of Organization filed with the Secretary of State for $100 online.

You create an Idaho LLC by filing the Certificate of Organization through the Secretary of State’s SOSBiz portal for $100, or $120 by mail, naming the company, at least one governor, and a registered agent with an Idaho street address. Filing online is both cheaper and faster than mailing a check, so the $20 mail premium is rarely worth it. There is no publication requirement, so $100 is the full cost of forming.

The free report that is not optional

The recurring obligation costs nothing, which is exactly the risk.

Idaho’s annual report is free but required every year by the end of your formation anniversary month, and missing it dissolves the LLC.

Every Idaho LLC files an annual report with the Secretary of State, and it is free, due by the end of the month in which the LLC was formed. That makes Idaho among the cheapest states to maintain, but the absence of a fee is a hazard, not a pure benefit. A filing that comes with a bill gets attention; a free one does not, so owners routinely forget the Idaho report because nothing about it feels like a payment due. Miss it, and the state administratively dissolves the LLC. Reinstatement costs $30 plus the back filings, and, importantly, you lose roughly sixty days of liability protection in the gap between dissolution and reinstatement, a window in which the shield the LLC exists to provide is simply not there. So the Idaho discipline is to treat the free anniversary-month report as a hard deadline, not a courtesy, and to know that the anniversary-month timing, rather than a fixed calendar date, is itself easy to lose track of. There is no franchise tax to add on top; Idaho charges none.

Multiple entities, cheap but each on the calendar

Idaho’s low cost makes a multi-LLC structure affordable, with one caveat.

Because the report is free and there is no franchise tax, running several Idaho LLCs is inexpensive, but each has its own anniversary-month deadline.

Idaho has no series LLC, covered on the structure and cost page, so an investor holding several properties forms a separate LLC for each. The good news is that each one costs nothing to maintain, no annual fee and no franchise tax, so a stack of Idaho LLCs is genuinely cheap to keep. The catch is that each has its own free-but-required annual report, tied to its own formation anniversary month, so the deadlines are staggered across the year rather than falling on a single date. That multiplies the chances of forgetting one, and forgetting one dissolves that entity and opens its protection gap. So an Idaho multi-property structure is inexpensive but needs a calendar that tracks each entity’s anniversary month, precisely because none of them will send a bill to remind you.

The bottom line

An Idaho LLC forms on a Certificate of Organization filed with the Secretary of State for $100 online, naming a governor and an Idaho-address registered agent.

The annual report is free but required every year by the end of the formation anniversary month, and missing it dissolves the LLC.

Reinstatement costs $30 plus back filings and leaves roughly sixty days without liability protection, so the free report is a hard deadline.

There is no franchise tax, so running several Idaho LLCs is inexpensive, but each has its own staggered anniversary-month report.

The Idaho discipline is a calendar that tracks every entity’s anniversary month, since none will send a bill to prompt the free filing.

What this page does not cover

This page is about fees, forms, and deadlines. How creditors reach a member’s interest, the homestead, and the community-property exposure are on the protection page. The uniform act’s fiduciary floor and the fact that no written operating agreement is required are on the governance page. Idaho’s flat 5.3% income tax, the absence of a franchise or transfer tax, and the lack of a series LLC are on the structure and cost page.

Last verified August 2026.