SHEET KY-01 · FORMATION DOSSIER

Kentucky

Form an LLC in Kentucky 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: $40
Total with Formation Complete: $439
Annual duty cost: $15/yr
Report pattern: Annual report due by June 30 of each year; reports may be filed any time between January 1 and

On fee alone, Kentucky is the 2nd 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 Kentucky LLC by filing Articles of Organization with the Kentucky Secretary of State, Business Filings. The state fee is $40, 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. Quirk confirmed: flat $15 fee for all entities, June 30 deadline, January 1-June 30 window.

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 Kentucky Secretary of State, Business Filings. A name that implies a regulated activity (banking, insurance, trust) or a government affiliation invites rejection or a consent requirement in Kentucky 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

Kentucky 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 Kentucky Secretary of State, Business Filings. The formation document is the Articles of Organization; most Kentucky filings can be made online, and online filings are acknowledged faster than paper ones as a rule. The Secretary of State's FAQs give the range in one line: documents are usually processed the same day they are received, but it may take up to three business days (annual reports excepted). (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 Kentucky 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 Kentucky

Each entity must designate a registered agent and registered office in Kentucky upon whom process may be served; the annual report must confirm the principal office and registered agent/office, and changes require a statement of change (SOS Annual Reports / Business Filings Information pages)

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 Frankfort 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 — due Jun 30.

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

The recurring duty is the line that decides what Kentucky costs you in year three, not just year one. Annual report — due Jun 30. Priced into the five-year table on this sheet at $15 a year (annualised), it is the difference between a cheap formation and a cheap company.

If it is late. The Secretary of State publishes no late fee for this report

If the duty is missed altogether. Domestic entities that fail to file annual reports by June 30 are administratively dissolved (inactive and in bad standing until reinstatement); foreign entities face revocation of their certificate of authority

The tax the $15 headline does not show: Kentucky's LLET

Kentucky's $15 annual report is not the whole recurring bill. The state also taxes the entity itself under the Limited Liability Entity Tax, KRS 141.0401: the lesser of 0.095% of Kentucky gross receipts or 0.75% of Kentucky gross profits, but never less than a $175 annual minimum that applies regardless of tax credits. Every Kentucky LLC is in the net — a single-member LLC files its own return (Form 725) even though federal law disregards it. Companies with $3 million or less in total receipts pay exactly the $175 minimum, and the return is due on the 15th day of the fourth month after the tax year closes. Members may credit LLET paid above the minimum against their Kentucky income tax; the $175 floor itself is never credited back. Budget for $190 a year of Kentucky state charges, not $15.

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	$439	$399 package + $40 state fee; agent year 1 included
By end of year 2	$603	Year 1 + $149 agent renewal + $15 state duty
By end of year 5	$1,095	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 Kentucky sits in this Atlas: 2nd of 49 by formation fee ($40), and 8th by the five-year cost of ownership ($1,095). The year-one total of $439 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 $15 a year. The state duty itself makes up 5.5% of the five-year total; the rest is the package and the registered-agent renewal. That sits below the Atlas median five-year cost of $1,260. Judged on five years instead of filing day, Kentucky is one of the cheaper states to keep — and that longer view is the one a non-resident owner actually lives with.

Non-resident specifics in Kentucky

Kentucky’s recurring state cost for a domestic LLC is the duty on this sheet — Annual report — due Jun 30. 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 Kentucky 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 Kentucky; “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 Kentucky in the Atlas

Sources: formation fee and duty verified against official state sources — Kentucky Secretary of State, Business Filings: https://www.sos.ky.gov/bus/business-filings/Pages/Fees.aspx · duty record: https://www.sos.ky.gov/bus/business-filings/Pages/Annual-Reports.aspx · fees verified 2026-11-03, duties verified 2026-11-04. Federal figures (Form 5472 penalty) per IRS instructions for Form 5472.