SHEET VT-01 · FORMATION DOSSIER

Vermont

Form an LLC in Vermont 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: $155
Total with Formation Complete: $554
Annual duty cost: $45/yr
Report pattern: Within the first three months following the fiscal year end on record

On fee alone, Vermont is the 40th 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 Vermont LLC by filing Articles of Organization with the Vermont Secretary of State, Corporations Division. The state fee is $155, 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. Nonprofit corporations/cooperatives file biennial reports Jan 1-Apr 1, but that does not apply to for-profit LLCs.

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

Vermont 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 Vermont Secretary of State, Corporations Division. The formation document is the Articles of Organization; most Vermont filings can be made online, and online filings are acknowledged faster than paper ones as a rule. The Secretary of State publishes the split on its Business Services pages: online filing normally takes less than 1 business day, and filings received by mail take 7–10 business days (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 Vermont 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 Vermont

Vermont requires every LLC to maintain a registered agent with a physical street address in Vermont at all times; the agent must be an individual resident of Vermont or an entity authorised to do business there. The Corporations Division publishes the current rule on its registered-agent page, linked below.

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 Montpelier 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 within three months after your fiscal year end — $45.

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 Vermont costs you in year three, not just year one. Annual report — due within three months after your fiscal year end — $45. Priced into the five-year table on this sheet at the published $45 a year, it is the difference between a cheap formation and a cheap company.

If the duty is missed altogether. Termination of the Articles of Organization under 11 V.S.A. § 4034 (see below).

Termination, reinstatement and the L3C option

Vermont adds no late fee to a late annual report; the $45 is simply still owed. Let the report lapse altogether, though, and the Secretary of State terminates the company. Reinstatement under 11 V.S.A. s.4034 costs $35 for each year the report was missed, on top of the $45 report fee for that year, and a reinstated company is treated as though the termination had not happened. Vermont also offers a designation most states have never enacted: it was the first state to create the low-profit limited liability company, or L3C, in 2008 (11 V.S.A. ss.4161-4163) — an LLC formed to pursue a charitable or educational purpose ahead of profit, chosen by marking the designation on the Articles of Organization. The filing fee and the annual report are the same as for any other Vermont LLC.

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	$554	$399 package + $155 state fee; agent year 1 included
By end of year 2	$748	Year 1 + $149 agent renewal + $45 annual report
By end of year 5	$1,330	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.

The Atlas arithmetic for Vermont: formation fee $155 (40th of 49), year one $554 including the $399 Formation Complete package, five years $1,330 (29th of 49). Between year one and year five the only recurring items are the $149 agent renewal and the state duty of $45 a year. The state duty itself makes up 13.5% 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. A formation fee is a one-afternoon number; the five-year total is the cost of actually owning the company, and on that measure Vermont runs above the median state.

Non-resident specifics in Vermont

Vermont’s recurring state cost for a domestic LLC is the duty on this sheet — Annual report — due within three months after your fiscal year end — $45. 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 Vermont 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 Vermont; “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 Vermont in the Atlas

Sources: formation fee and duty verified against official state sources — Vermont Secretary of State, Corporations Division: https://sos.vermont.gov/business-services/fees-statutes · duty record: https://sos.vermont.gov/business-services/business-filings/annualbiennial-reports · fees verified 2026-11-03, duties verified 2026-11-04. Federal figures (Form 5472 penalty) per IRS instructions for Form 5472.