Connecticut

State formation fee

$120

Total with Formation Complete

$519

Annual duty cost

$80/yr

Report pattern

Each year between January 1 and March 31.

On fee alone, Connecticut is the 29th 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 Connecticut LLC by filing Certificate of Organization with the Connecticut Secretary of the State, Business Services Division. The state fee is $120, 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. The due window, the no-late-fee rule and the dissolution consequence below are the Secretary of the State's own, stated in its Annual Report FAQs. The $80 fee is from the Secretary's annual report forms and fees schedule (business.ct.gov knowledge base: LLC Annual Report $80; all annual reports are filed online). First-report timing and agent details are from the SOS Certificate of Organization form and instructions (business.ct.gov) and the SOS 'Who can be an agent' guidance; the agent guidance also notes that foreign entities (not domestic LLCs) may designate the Secretary of the State as agent. Before 2018, LLC reports were due by the last day of the anniversary month; the fixed January 1-March 31 window applies now.

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 Connecticut Secretary of the State, Business Services Division. A name that implies a regulated activity (banking, insurance, trust) or a government affiliation invites rejection or a consent requirement in Connecticut as in most states. For a non-resident there is a second, quieter naming point: the name on the Certificate 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

Connecticut 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 Connecticut Secretary of the State, Business Services Division. The formation document is the Certificate of Organization; most Connecticut filings can be made online, and online filings are acknowledged faster than paper ones as a rule. Connecticut publishes expedited service rather than a standard clock: the Business Services Division offers 24-hour expedited processing for $50 through its business.ct.gov service pages, and no standard turnaround for LLC formation is published (checked 2026-11-05). (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 Connecticut 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 Connecticut

The LLC may not be its own agent. The agent may be an individual who is a resident of Connecticut (SOS guidance: any Connecticut resident age 18 or older; a member or manager may serve), who must provide a Connecticut business address (or state 'none'), a Connecticut residence address, and a Connecticut mailing address (P.O. Box acceptable for mailing only), and must sign accepting the appointment; or a business entity already on record with the Secretary with a Connecticut address - a Connecticut corporation, LLC, LLP or statutory trust, or a foreign corporation, LLC, LLP or statutory trust holding a Certificate of Authority with a Connecticut address on file - which must also accept the appointment by signature.

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 Hartford 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

Annual report — Each year between January 1 and March 31 — $80.

1. Jan
2. Feb
3. Mar
4. Apr
5. May
6. Jun
7. Jul
8. Aug
9. Sep
10. Oct
11. Nov
12. Dec

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

The recurring duty is the line that decides what Connecticut costs you in year three, not just year one. Annual report — Each year between January 1 and March 31 — $80. Priced into the five-year table on this sheet at $80 a year (annualised), it is the difference between a cheap formation and a cheap company.

If it is late. No late or penalty fee: the Secretary of the State charges no additional fee for a late LLC annual report (per the SOS Annual Report FAQs), so the late fee is $0.

If the duty is missed altogether. The Secretary will not issue a Certificate of Legal Existence (good standing) for an entity that has failed to file one or more annual reports, and may administratively dissolve any entity that is more than one year in default of its annual report filing obligation.

Cost of ownership

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.

Connecticut in Atlas context: the $120 formation fee ranks 29th of the 49 jurisdictions in this Atlas, and the five-year cost of $1,435 ranks 33rd. Year one is $519 all-in — the $399 Formation Complete package plus the state fee charged at cost. In years two to five the recurring charges are the $149 agent renewal and the state duty of $80 a year. The state duty itself makes up 22.3% 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. The five-year figure is the comparison that matters: a state can look cheap on filing day and still be the expensive company to own, so this sheet prices Connecticut over the full five years rather than the first afternoon.

Non-resident specifics in Connecticut

Connecticut’s recurring state cost for a domestic LLC is the duty on this sheet — Annual report — Each year between January 1 and March 31 — $80. 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 Connecticut 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 Connecticut; “my operations and customers are there” is an answer, a fee table is not. Form where the answer is true.

Sources: formation fee and duty verified against official state sources — Connecticut Secretary of the State, Business Services Division: https://business.ct.gov/ · duty record: https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/SOTS/Business-Services/BSD-Forms/llc-2017/ANNUAL-REPORT-FREQUENTLY-ASKED-QUESTIONS.pdf · fees verified 2026-11-03, duties verified 2026-11-04. Federal figures (Form 5472 penalty) per IRS instructions for Form 5472.