SHEET MD-01 · FORMATION DOSSIER

Maryland

Form an LLC in Maryland 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: $100
Total with Formation Complete: $499
Annual duty cost: $300/yr
Report pattern: Form 1 Annual Report and Business Personal Property Return due April 15 each year, filed with S

On fee alone, Maryland is the 19th 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 Maryland LLC by filing Articles of Organization with the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation (SDAT). The state fee is $100, 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: combined annual report + personal property return (Form 1) due April 15, $300 for domestic or foreign LLCs, administered by SDAT rather than SOS.

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 Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation (SDAT). A name that implies a regulated activity (banking, insurance, trust) or a government affiliation invites rejection or a consent requirement in Maryland 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

Maryland 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 Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation (SDAT). The formation document is the Articles of Organization; most Maryland filings can be made online, and online filings are acknowledged faster than paper ones as a rule. Maryland Business Express publishes its processing times by the month: non-expedited online filings are reviewed during the second calendar month after submission, expedited filings receive an initial review in 7–14 business days, and Rush service ($325, filed before 2:30 p.m.) is reviewed within about 3 hours. (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 Maryland 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 Maryland

Maryland uses 'resident agent': all businesses are legally required to have an active and valid principal office and resident agent in Maryland to maintain good standing (SDAT); a resident agent must be a citizen of Maryland who resides in Maryland or an active Maryland corporation, with a Maryland street address (SDAT resolution instructions)

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 Annapolis 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 — Form 1 Annual Report and Business Personal Property Return due April 15 each year, filed with SDAT (not the Secretary of State); the personal property portion must be completed in detail if the business owns, leases or uses Maryland personal property with total original cost of $20,000 or more — $300.

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

The recurring duty is the line that decides what Maryland costs you in year three, not just year one. Annual report — Form 1 Annual Report and Business Personal Property Return due April 15 each year, filed with SDAT (not the Secretary of State); the personal property portion must be completed in detail if the business owns, leases or uses Maryland personal property with total original cost of $20,000 or more — $300. Priced into the five-year table on this sheet at $300 a year (annualised), it is the difference between a cheap formation and a cheap company.

If it is late. No flat late fee: an entity filing postmarked after April 15 receives an initial penalty of 1/10 of one percent of the county assessment, plus interest at 2% of the initial penalty amount for each 30 days or part thereof the return is late; penalties are billed by SDAT, not prepaid (2026 Form 1 penalty clauses)

If the duty is missed altogether. Entities that fail to file receive estimated assessments at twice the estimated value of personal property owned, and failure to file results in forfeiture of the Maryland charter or the right to do business in Maryland (2026 Form 1)

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	$499	$399 package + $100 state fee; agent year 1 included
By end of year 2	$948	Year 1 + $149 agent renewal + $300 state duty
By end of year 5	$2,295	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 Maryland sits in this Atlas: 19th of 49 by formation fee ($100), and 44th by the five-year cost of ownership ($2,295). The year-one total of $499 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 $300 a year. The state duty itself makes up 52.3% 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. Judged on five years instead of filing day, Maryland 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 Maryland

Maryland’s recurring state cost for a domestic LLC is the duty on this sheet — Annual report — Form 1 Annual Report and Business Personal Property Return due April 15 each year, filed with SDAT (not the Secretary of State); the…. 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 Maryland 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 Maryland; “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 Maryland in the Atlas

Sources: formation fee and duty verified against official state sources — Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation (SDAT): https://dat.maryland.gov/businesses/Documents/FEES.pdf · duty record: https://dat.maryland.gov/SDAT%20Forms/PPR_Forms/2026_Form1.pdf · fees verified 2026-11-03, duties verified 2026-11-04. Federal figures (Form 5472 penalty) per IRS instructions for Form 5472.