Oregon LLC filing: $100 to form, $100 a year to stay alive, and a second annual return most owners forget

Every figure on this page comes from the Oregon Secretary of State and the Department of Revenue, not an aggregator. Oregon’s entity filings are unremarkable on their face: $100 to form the LLC and a $100 annual report to keep it in good standing, with no franchise tax. The complication is that a high-revenue Oregon LLC has a second annual obligation that has nothing to do with the Secretary of State, the Corporate Activity Tax return, filed with the Department of Revenue on a different schedule. Owners routinely track the $100 annual report and forget the CAT return, and the two are not interchangeable: missing the annual report gets your LLC dissolved, and missing the CAT return gets you a tax penalty. Both matter, and they are handled by different agencies.

Forming the company

Formation is a single filing, and one field on it does more than owners expect.

Oregon forms an LLC on Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State for $100, and the management structure stated on the articles governs.

You create an Oregon LLC by filing the Articles of Organization with the Oregon Secretary of State for a $100 fee, online or by mail. The articles name the company, its registered agent, who must have an Oregon address, and the management structure. That management field is not a formality: as the governance page explains, whether the LLC is member-managed or manager-managed is fixed by the articles, and the operating agreement cannot override it, so the choice made on this filing carries real consequences for who has authority and who bears liability. Get the management designation right on the articles, because correcting it later means amending the public filing, not just revising the agreement.

The annual report that keeps the entity alive

The recurring Secretary of State obligation is a single modest filing.

Oregon requires a $100 annual report by the LLC’s anniversary date, and there is no franchise tax on top of it.

Every Oregon LLC files an annual report with the Secretary of State, with a $100 fee, due by the anniversary of the date the LLC was formed. Because the deadline is tied to each entity’s own anniversary rather than a single statewide date, an owner with several LLCs has several dates to track. There is no franchise tax, so the $100 annual report is the entire recurring Secretary of State cost of the entity. The report keeps the company’s registered agent and address current and keeps the LLC in good standing; the consequence of skipping it is on the next section.

The second return owners forget

Here is the Oregon-specific trap, and it is a filing with a different agency.

A high-revenue Oregon LLC owes a separate Corporate Activity Tax return to the Department of Revenue, and it is easy to miss because it is not the Secretary of State annual report.

If an LLC has more than $750,000 of Oregon commercial activity it must register for the Corporate Activity Tax, and above $1 million it owes the tax, filed on a CAT return with the Department of Revenue, typically due April 15, entirely separate from the $100 annual report. Owners conflate the two because both feel like annual paperwork, but they are different obligations with different agencies and different consequences. Missing the annual report leads the Secretary of State to administratively dissolve the LLC, which drops its good standing and its liability shield until reinstatement. Missing the CAT return leads the Department of Revenue to assess penalties and interest on the tax. A high-revenue Oregon LLC has to calendar both, because satisfying one does nothing for the other, and the CAT itself, a gross-receipts tax covered on the structure and cost page, can be owed even in a year the business had no profit.

Why the no-series rule raises the ongoing cost

Oregon’s lack of a series LLC shows up in the annual filings.

Because Oregon has no series LLC, a multi-property plan needs a separate LLC for each property, and each one owes its own $100 annual report.

A state with a series LLC lets one entity hold several properties in walled-off series and file a single report. Oregon has no series statute, so an investor who wants each property insulated forms a separate LLC for each, and each of those LLCs is a separate filer with its own $100 annual report and its own anniversary deadline. A ten-property portfolio held the safe way is ten annual reports and ten deadlines, plus ten registered-agent arrangements. That is a modest per-entity cost, lower than Maryland’s stacked $300 reports, but it is real administrative load, and combined with the CAT’s treatment of commonly controlled entities it means an Oregon multi-property structure needs deliberate calendaring across both the Secretary of State and the Department of Revenue.

The bottom line

An Oregon LLC forms on Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State for $100, and the management structure stated on the articles governs, so it must be set correctly.

The recurring Secretary of State obligation is a $100 annual report due by the anniversary date, with no franchise tax.

A high-revenue Oregon LLC also owes a separate Corporate Activity Tax return to the Department of Revenue, and the two obligations have different agencies and different consequences.

Missing the annual report leads to administrative dissolution and a lapsed shield, while missing the CAT return leads to tax penalties, so both must be tracked.

Because Oregon has no series LLC, a multi-property plan stacks a $100 annual report per LLC, each with its own anniversary deadline.

What this page does not cover

This page is about fees, forms, and deadlines. How creditors reach a member’s interest, the non-exclusive charging order, and the raised homestead are on the protection page. What Oregon’s law lets your operating agreement do, and why management is set by your articles, is on the governance page. Oregon’s high income tax, the absence of a sales tax, the Corporate Activity Tax, and the lack of a series LLC are on the structure and cost page.

Last verified August 2026.