SHEET AK-01 · FORMATION DOSSIER

Alaska

Form an LLC in Alaska as a non-resident: the verified state fee, the duty that follows you every year, the agent rule, and the traps that are specific to this state — each figure sourced on this sheet.

State formation fee: $250
Total with Formation Complete: $649
Annual duty cost: $50/yr
Report pattern: January 2 of every second year: January 2 of even-numbered years if the entity was created in a

On fee alone, Alaska is the 45th cheapest of the 49 jurisdictions in this Atlas to form in. Fee is the smallest part of the decision — the duty below is the part that repeats.

What it takes here

You form a Alaska LLC by filing Articles of Organization with the Alaska Division of Corporations, Business and Professional Licensing. The state fee is $250, collected by us at cost as a pass-through — the state keeps its fee; our $399 is separate and labelled as ours on the pricing page. Alaska has no Secretary of State for business filings; the Division of Corporations, Business and Professional Licensing (Dept. of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development) is the filing office. Filing fee is the domestic-entity biennial report fee from the Division's Corporation Forms & Fees schedule (the foreign LLC biennial report fee is $200). Due-date rule also stated on the Division's Biennial Reports page. Registered agent rules per the Division's Registered Agents FAQs.

Name rules

Your company name must contain a limited-liability designator — “Limited Liability Company” or an accepted abbreviation such as “LLC” — and must be distinguishable from names already on the records of the Alaska Division of Corporations, Business and Professional Licensing. A name that implies a regulated activity (banking, insurance, trust) or a government affiliation invites rejection or a consent requirement in Alaska as in most states. For a non-resident there is a second, quieter naming point: the name on the Articles of Organization is the name the IRS will print on your EIN confirmation (the CP 575), and it is the name your bank and payment processors will match against your documents. Pick the final name before filing; amending it later is a second state filing with a second fee.

Publication

Alaska imposes no newspaper-publication requirement on a new LLC. The publication duty that founders read about belongs to a small set of states — New York, Arizona and Nebraska are the ones in this Atlas — and it does not travel with you if you form here.

Forms, office and processing

The filing office is the Alaska Division of Corporations, Business and Professional Licensing. The formation document is the Articles of Organization; most Alaska filings can be made online, and online filings are acknowledged faster than paper ones as a rule. The Corporations Section's own filing instructions give the split plainly: online filings are filed for record and posted immediately, while hardcopy filings take 10–15 business days from March to September and more than 15 business days from October to February, when biennial-report volume peaks. There is no paid expedite — the online channel is the fast lane. (Processing source: the office’s own page — checked 2026-11-05.) What we commit to in writing, before anything is filed, is the fee, the duty and the due pattern on this sheet.

The foreign-registration warning

Forming in Alaska does not licence you to operate everywhere. If your LLC will have an office, employees, inventory or a sustained physical presence in another state, that state will generally require foreign qualification there — a second registration, a second agent and a second set of duties, on top of this one. Non-residents most often trip on this by forming in a low-fee state while living-adjacent operations, warehousing or staff sit somewhere else. The state of formation should follow the business, not the other way round; the diagnostic on this site asks where your customers and operations are for exactly this reason.

Your registered agent in Alaska

Must appoint and continuously maintain a registered agent in Alaska (AS 10.50.055): an individual resident of Alaska, or a domestic or foreign corporation authorized to transact business in Alaska - an LLC, LLP or LP may not serve as registered agent. The agent must be physically present/reliably available at the Alaska addresses on file; the registered office must be the agent's real location (not a virtual office or mail-holding/forwarding service); an entity may not be its own registered agent.

Formation Complete includes the registered agent for year one. From year two the renewal is $149 a year — the same figure on every sheet in this Atlas, because the agent’s job (a real address, a person or service that can receive process, and forwarding that actually reaches a founder overseas) costs the same diligence in Juneau as anywhere else. If you move the agent elsewhere, the duty calendar below does not move with it: the report duty belongs to the LLC, not to the agent.

Duty calendar

Biennial report — due Jan 2 every 2 years — $100 (free initial report within 6 months of formation).

Filled cell = a month in which this state’s duty falls due.

The recurring duty is the line that decides what Alaska costs you in year three, not just year one. Biennial report — due Jan 2 every 2 years — $100 (free initial report within 6 months of formation). Priced into the five-year table on this sheet at $50 a year (annualised), it is the difference between a cheap formation and a cheap company.

If the duty is missed altogether. Failure to meet the filing requirements can result in involuntary dissolution (domestic entity) or revocation of authority to transact business (foreign entity). An entity that fails to maintain a registered agent or required addresses for 30 days or more is placed in Non-Compliant status and, if uncorrected, is involuntarily dissolved (domestic) or revoked (foreign).

Cost of ownership

Formation Complete $399 one-time + state fee at cost; agent renewal $149/yr from year 2; state duty annualised from the verified figure on this sheet.
Horizon	Total paid	What it contains
Year 1	$649	$399 package + $250 state fee; agent year 1 included
By end of year 2	$848	Year 1 + $149 agent renewal + $50 state duty
By end of year 5	$1,445	Year 1 + four renewals + four years of state duty

Compare that five-year figure, not the formation fee, against any other state you are considering — the compare tray in the Atlas does it side by side for up to three states. A state that is $100 cheaper to form and $300 a year heavier to keep is the expensive state.

Where Alaska sits in this Atlas: 45th of 49 by formation fee ($250), and 34th by the five-year cost of ownership ($1,445). The year-one total of $649 is the $399 package with the state fee passed through at cost; after that, the meter runs at the $149 yearly agent renewal plus the state duty of $50 a year. The state duty itself makes up 13.8% of the five-year total; the rest is the package and the registered-agent renewal. That sits above the Atlas median five-year cost of $1,260. Judged on five years instead of filing day, Alaska is a state whose keeping costs deserve a second look before you file — and that longer view is the one a non-resident owner actually lives with.

Non-resident specifics in Alaska

Alaska’s recurring state cost for a domestic LLC is the duty on this sheet — Biennial report — due Jan 2 every 2 years — $100 (free initial report within 6 months of formation). Two cautions decide whether that stays the whole story. First, tax follows activity, not paperwork: if your customers, property or people are in another state, that state can require foreign qualification there and tax the activity there, whatever this sheet says. Second, an LLC is a state-law shell around a federal tax position: a foreign-owned single-member LLC is disregarded for federal income tax by default, which is exactly the status that carries the Form 5472 duty described in the non-resident section below — the state choice does not change it.

The federal layer, which no state choice removes. A single-member LLC owned by a non-resident is, by default, a disregarded entity for US federal income tax — and since 2017 that status carries an annual information duty: Form 5472 attached to a pro-forma Form 1120, due each year the LLC exists, reporting reportable transactions with its foreign owner (funding the company counts). The penalty for a missing or late Form 5472 starts at $25,000. Multi-member LLCs are taxed as partnerships by default and file Form 1065, with their own withholding questions when US-source income reaches foreign partners. None of this is a reason not to form; all of it is a reason to form with the calendar already drawn. The EIN guide on this site walks the Form SS-4 route for founders with no SSN or ITIN, the CP 575 you receive, and the 5472 duty in full.

Address and banking reality. Your Alaska LLC’s address on the state record is its registered office — the agent’s address — which is a service address, not your trading address, and should never be sold to you as one. Banks and payment processors will ask for the beneficial owner’s foreign address and passport-grade identification, and many will ask why the company sits in Alaska; “my operations and customers are there” is an answer, a fee table is not. Form where the answer is true.

Plot my route — the 5-question diagnostic Compare Alaska in the Atlas

Sources: formation fee and duty verified against official state sources — Alaska Division of Corporations, Business and Professional Licensing: https://www.commerce.alaska.gov/web/cbpl/Corporations/CorporationFormsFees · duty record: https://www.commerce.alaska.gov/web/portals/5/pub/Entity_Responsibility.pdf · fees verified 2026-11-03, duties verified 2026-11-04. Federal figures (Form 5472 penalty) per IRS instructions for Form 5472.