Missouri LLC filing: $50 to form, and one of only four states that never makes you file a report again

Every figure on this page comes from the Missouri Secretary of State, not an aggregator. Missouri is about as cheap to keep as an LLC gets, and the reason is unusual: it does not require an annual report, or a biennial one, or any recurring filing at all. Missouri is one of only four states, with Arizona, New Mexico, and Ohio, where an LLC files its formation papers once and then owes the Secretary of State nothing on a schedule. There is no $50 yearly fee, no information update, no deadline to miss. That is a genuine convenience, and it has a quiet cost that ties back to whether your liability shield actually works: with no report to force an annual check-in, nothing prompts you to keep your registered agent and address current, and a stale agent is exactly how a lawsuit turns into a default judgment you never saw.

Forming the company

Formation is a single low-cost filing with the Secretary of State.

Missouri forms an LLC on Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State for $50 online, or $105 by mail.

You create a Missouri LLC by filing the Articles of Organization with the Secretary of State’s Corporations Division, under RSMo 347.037, for $50 through the online business filing system or $105 on paper. Online filings are typically processed within a business day; paper filings take weeks. The articles name the company, its organizer, and a registered agent, and they state whether the LLC is member-managed or manager-managed under RSMo 347.079. Missouri requires the registered agent to have a physical Missouri address. One thing the articles do here that they do not in every state: if you want series, you elect it on this form under RSMo 347.186, and the structure and cost page covers what that buys.

The report Missouri never asks for

Here is the feature that makes Missouri cheap, stated plainly.

After formation, a Missouri LLC owes the Secretary of State no annual report, no biennial report, and no recurring fee.

Most states require an annual or biennial report, an information filing that updates the state on the company’s agent, address, and sometimes management, with a fee attached. Missouri requires none. Once the LLC is formed, there is nothing to file with the Secretary of State on a recurring basis, and no recurring fee to pay. Combined with the absence of a franchise tax, that makes the ongoing state cost of a Missouri LLC effectively zero, cheaper even than a biennial-report state like Indiana. For an owner holding several entities, that is real: no calendar of report deadlines, no per-entity fees stacking up each year.

The cost hiding inside the convenience

The absence of a report removes a fee, and it also removes a reminder, which is where the risk sits.

With no annual report to prompt an update, nothing forces you to keep your registered agent current, and a lapsed agent is how a default judgment slips through.

In an annual-report state, the yearly filing doubles as a forced check-in: you confirm or update the registered agent and address every year, so a resigned agent or a moved office gets caught. Missouri has no such prompt. If your registered agent resigns, moves, or stops forwarding mail, and no annual filing makes you notice, the first sign of a problem can be a default judgment entered because a lawsuit was served on an agent who no longer functioned and never reached you. The liability shield does not help against a judgment you did not defend. So the discipline a report would have imposed becomes the owner’s own responsibility in Missouri: keep the registered agent live and the address current, and update the state promptly when either changes, because nothing in the calendar will remind you. The convenience is real, but it shifts the burden of keeping the record accurate from a state deadline onto you, and the cost of getting it wrong is measured in a judgment, not a late fee.

What you actually owe over time

The recurring obligations are tax obligations, not entity filings.

A Missouri LLC’s recurring costs are tax filings, not Secretary of State filings, because the entity itself has no annual state fee.

After formation, what a Missouri LLC owes on a schedule is driven by its activity: income tax on the members’ share of profits at Missouri’s individual rate, sales and use tax if it sells taxable goods, employer taxes if it has employees, and any local licenses. Those are covered by the Department of Revenue and local authorities, not the Secretary of State. The entity-level state cost, the thing other states charge every year just to keep the company on the rolls, is zero in Missouri. A foreign LLC registering to do business in Missouri registers once as well. Between a $50 formation fee and no recurring report, Missouri is one of the least expensive states in the country to form and hold an LLC, as long as the owner takes on the record-keeping the state does not force.

The bottom line

A Missouri LLC forms on Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State for $50 online or $105 by mail, with a Missouri-address registered agent and the management structure stated in the articles.

Missouri is one of only four states with no annual or biennial LLC report, so after formation the entity owes the Secretary of State nothing recurring.

With no franchise tax either, the recurring state cost of a Missouri LLC is effectively zero, cheaper than a biennial-report state.

The absence of a report also removes the annual prompt to keep the registered agent current, and a lapsed agent can lead to a default judgment the shield does not cure.

The recurring obligations that remain are tax filings with the Department of Revenue and local authorities, not Secretary of State filings.

What this page does not cover

This page is about fees, forms, and deadlines. How creditors reach a member’s interest, the case-law charging order, and the insurance point in veil piercing are on the protection page. What Missouri’s law lets your operating agreement do, and the statute that commands you to have one, is on the governance page. Missouri’s capital gains exemption, the series LLC, and the absence of any transfer tax are on the structure and cost page.

Last verified August 2026.