SHEET OR-01 · FORMATION DOSSIER

Oregon

Form an LLC in Oregon 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: $100/yr
Report pattern: Annual report (renewal) due on the anniversary of registration. SOS: entities 'must file annual

On fee alone, Oregon is the 24th 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 Oregon LLC by filing Articles of Organization with the Oregon Secretary of State, Corporation Division. 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. The fee is the one on the official SOS Business Registry Fee Schedule (Limited Liability Companies — Domestic: Renewal (Annually) $100; Foreign: Renewal (Annually) $275). Registered-agent details are from the official SOS Registered Agents and Service of Process page. The $100 figure here is the DOMESTIC fee.

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

Oregon 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 Oregon Secretary of State, Corporation Division. The formation document is the Articles of Organization; most Oregon filings can be made online, and online filings are acknowledged faster than paper ones as a rule. The Secretary of State's Register a Business page posts the live figures: online Business Registry filings were estimated at 1–3 business days for filings received as of 2026-11-04 (when checked for this sheet), and the mail/fax queue was then processing documents received 2026-10-29. (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 Oregon 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 Oregon

All business entities must appoint and maintain a registered agent with a physical street address in Oregon. Agent is an individual residing in Oregon whose business office is identical to the registered office, or a registered domestic/foreign business entity authorized to transact business in Oregon whose business office is identical to the registered office. Registered office must be an Oregon physical street address — not a PO Box, commercial mail receiving agency, mail forwarding business or virtual office; the entity cannot be its own registered agent (an individual owner may serve); consent is required.

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 Salem 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 — Annual report (renewal) due on the anniversary of registration. SOS: entities 'must file annual reports to update name and address information and pay for renewal' and 'We send a renewal notice about 45 days before your renewal date, the anniversary of your registration.' — $100.

Pattern cell = the duty follows your formation anniversary or fiscal year rather than a fixed statewide date — the date is set by your own formation record.

The recurring duty is the line that decides what Oregon costs you in year three, not just year one. Annual report — Annual report (renewal) due on the anniversary of registration. SOS: entities 'must file annual reports to update name and address information and pay for renewal' and 'We send a renewal notice about 45 days before your renewal date, the anniversary of your registration.' — $100. Priced into the five-year table on this sheet at $100 a year (annualised), it is the difference between a cheap formation and a cheap company.

If it is late. The SOS Business Registry Fee Schedule states no late fee amount (domestic LLC renewal $100; foreign renewal $275). Per the Secretary of State's reinstatement page, a dissolved entity pays a reinstatement fee along with the missed annual fee(s); no $100 late fee appears on the schedule.

If the duty is missed altogether. Administrative dissolution for failure to file the annual report. SOS Reinstate a Business page: 'If your business was administratively dissolved for failure to file an annual report, you can request to have the business entity reinstated'; reinstatement for entities dissolved less than 5 years can be done online/by form by correcting information and paying the reinstatement fee plus missed annual fee(s). Failure to designate a new registered agent also results in administrative dissolution.

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	$748	Year 1 + $149 agent renewal + $100 state duty
By end of year 5	$1,495	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.

Oregon in Atlas context: the $100 formation fee ranks 24th of the 49 jurisdictions in this Atlas, and the five-year cost of $1,495 ranks 38th. Year one is $499 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 $100 a year. The state duty itself makes up 26.8% 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. 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 Oregon over the full five years rather than the first afternoon.

Non-resident specifics in Oregon

Oregon’s recurring state cost for a domestic LLC is the duty on this sheet — Annual report — Annual report (renewal) due on the anniversary of registration. SOS: entities 'must file annual reports to update name and address…. 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 Oregon 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 Oregon; “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 Oregon in the Atlas

Sources: formation fee and duty verified against official state sources — Oregon Secretary of State, Corporation Division: https://sos.oregon.gov/business/documents/business-registry-forms/br-fee-schedule.pdf · duty record: https://sos.oregon.gov/business/information-center/pages/starting-business.aspx · fees verified 2026-11-03, duties verified 2026-11-04. Federal figures (Form 5472 penalty) per IRS instructions for Form 5472.