2026 Business Filing Deadlines by State

A business filing calendar is only useful if it holds the right kind of date. Two companies of identical size can owe their reports eleven months apart. That happens because one was formed in a state that prints a single date on the statute, and the other in a state that counts from the day its own clerk accepted the certificate. This page is the calendar itself: the due date, the filing name, and the cycle for all 51 jurisdictions, followed by the federal dates that sit on top of them.

If you want the underlying explanation of what the filing is and what it asks for, that lives on our LLC annual report guide, and the service-side view is on annual report deadlines by state.

The Four Deadline Patterns Behind All 51 Calendars

Every due date in the table below is one of four shapes, and knowing which shape you are dealing with decides how you run the calendar.

Fixed calendar date. 19 jurisdictions print a date in the statute and apply it to every entity on the register. Alabama corporations sit on March 15, and Alabama LLCs file nothing at all. Florida's date is May 1, Georgia's is April 1, and Texas's is May 15. The date does not care when you formed. A company registered in December still owes the following spring, which is the single most common surprise for a first-year filer.

Formation anniversary. 19 jurisdictions count from your own record. Some use the anniversary month, some the last day of that month, some the exact date. The number to work from is the date the state accepted the filing, not the date you signed the paperwork or the date your payment cleared. Pull it from the stamped certificate or the entity record on the agency portal. An anniversary calendar built from memory drifts by weeks.

Fiscal year end. 3 jurisdictions tie the report to your accounting year rather than to the calendar, usually the fifteenth day of the third, fourth or fifth month after the year closes. If you elected a non-calendar year for tax purposes, these dates move with it.

Two-year cycle. 8 jurisdictions file biennially, and the parity of the year is part of the rule. Iowa takes its report in odd years. Nebraska splits the difference, with corporations in even years and LLCs in odd ones. An Iowa entity that files in the wrong year has not filed early. It has filed nothing.

Two jurisdictions sit outside the pattern entirely. An Ohio corporation files a Statement of Continued Existence once every five years, and an Ohio LLC files nothing at all. A South Carolina LLC has no annual report, while a South Carolina corporation files with the Department of Revenue instead of the secretary of state. Neither state is a place to stop paying attention: Ohio still expects a current statutory agent, and the tax filing in South Carolina still has a date.

One more structural point before the table. If you have registered to do business in a second state, you have taken on that state's cycle as well as your home state's, with a fee that is frequently higher than the domestic one. Our guide on when to foreign qualify an LLC covers the trigger for that obligation. The calendar consequence is simply that each qualification adds a row.

Every 2026 Deadline, Jurisdiction by Jurisdiction

Every jurisdiction links to its own 2026 guide, where the agency, the form number, the fee, and the current processing time are set out in full. Three cautions on reading the table: where a state shows two dates, the split is normally between LLCs and corporations, so take the one that matches your entity type.

Where the due date rolls onto a weekend or a state holiday, most agencies accept the next business day, but a few do not, and a rejected submission is treated as never filed. And where a state charges a franchise tax alongside the report, clearing one obligation does not clear the other. The comparison on franchise tax by state shows where the two run in parallel.

Three of the bigger states deserve a note of their own, because their filings are the ones most often misread. A California LLC files its Statement of Information every two years, while a California corporation files annually. Both sit alongside the separate $800 minimum franchise tax collected by the Franchise Tax Board. A Texas entity has no secretary of state annual report at all, but does owe the franchise tax report and public information report in May.

A Delaware corporation files its annual report and franchise tax by March 1, while a Delaware LLC files no report and pays a flat annual tax by June 1. The mechanics are on our Delaware franchise tax guide, and the entity-level detail is on the Delaware annual report page.

The Federal Dates That Sit On Top of the State Calendar

State reports are only half of the calendar. Four federal dates matter to most small entities, and they are set by the IRS and FinCEN rather than by any secretary of state.

Entity income tax returns. IRS Publication 509 puts a partnership return on Form 1065 and an S corporation return on Form 1120-S at the 15th day of the third month after the tax year ends. A C corporation return on Form 1120 is due at the 15th day of the fourth month. For a calendar-year filer that is March 15 and April 15. Form 7004 buys six more months to file. It does not buy any more time to pay.

Foreign-owned single-member LLCs. A US LLC with one foreign owner is treated as a disregarded entity that must file Form 5472 attached to a pro forma Form 1120. It is due on the Form 1120 due date including extensions, even in a year with no income and no activity. The penalty for missing it is $25,000 per form, which makes it the most expensive date on this page. The mechanics are in our Form 5472 guide.

Beneficial ownership information. This is the requirement that changed most in the past eighteen months, so treat any older calendar as unreliable. Checked against FinCEN's beneficial ownership information page on August 12, 2026: companies created in the United States are exempt. FinCEN finalized that position in a rule issued on August 14, 2026. The obligation now falls only on entities formed under foreign law that have registered to do business in a US jurisdiction and do not qualify for an exemption.

Those companies file within 30 calendar days of notice that their registration is effective. Foreign entities that were already registered before March 26, 2025 had an April 25, 2025 date. Updates are due within 30 days of any change to reported information. The foreign-entity detail is on our page.

Payroll and information returns. If you have employees or pay contractors, quarterly employment tax returns and January information returns belong on the same calendar as the state reports. They are outside the scope of this page, but they are the dates that most often collide with a spring annual report and push it late.

Five Mistakes That Turn a Calendar Into a Reinstatement

Mistake 1: Building the anniversary from the wrong date

In an anniversary state the clock starts on the date the agency accepted your filing. Founders routinely diary the date they submitted, the date the formation service invoiced them, or the date the EIN arrived. A gap of two or three weeks between those dates is normal, and in a state that keys the deadline to a specific day rather than a month, that gap is the whole margin. Take the date from the stamped certificate or the entity record on the state portal, and store it with the entity number.

Mistake 2: Treating the state notice as the reminder

Most states send a courtesy notice, and most send it to the registered agent's address rather than to the founder. Agents forward it, until an agent resigns, an address changes, or an email lands in a spam folder. No state accepts a missing notice as a defense, because the deadline is set by statute rather than by correspondence: Fla. Stat. § 605.0212 fixes its own filing window and Del. Code tit. 8 § 502 fixes another, and neither is conditioned on a notice reaching anybody. Keep your own calendar and treat the notice as confirmation, not as the trigger.

Mistake 3: Forgetting that a qualification carries its own date

A company that formed at home and later registered in two neighboring states now has three reports on three cycles, and the two foreign registrations frequently cost more than the domestic one. Losing good standing in a state where you are merely qualified is quieter than losing it at home. It surfaces at the worst moment, normally when a customer asks for a certificate of good standing before signing.

Mistake 4: Reading a two-year cycle as a one-year cycle

The biennial states catch people in both directions. Filing every year in a biennial state is merely wasted effort. Filing in the wrong half of a two-year cycle is a missed report, and because nothing was due in the intervening year there is no annual rhythm to remind you. Write the next due year, not just the month, into the calendar entry.

Mistake 5: Clearing the report and missing the tax

In some jurisdictions the report and the tax are one submission. In others they are two filings to two agencies, and satisfying one leaves the other outstanding. That is how a company ends up current with the secretary of state and delinquent with the revenue department, which is enough to block a certificate of good standing and, in several states, to block a reinstatement until the tax side is cleared first.

Three Calendars, Three Outcomes

Example 1: Larkspur Pottery LLC, one state, one date

Larkspur Pottery is a two-person ceramics studio in Bozeman with no employees outside Montana and no out-of-state registrations. Montana takes an annual report on April 15, and the state currently waives the fee for reports filed by that date, with $35 charged after it. The whole compliance calendar is one recurring entry, set for March 1, six weeks of margin against a fee that costs less than a bag of clay.

In four years the studio has never been late, and the total spend on state compliance is $80. This is what the majority of small businesses should look like, and it is the strongest argument for forming where you actually operate.

Example 2: Verity Payroll Group Inc., four states, one missed row

Verity is a payroll bureau incorporated in Georgia with foreign qualifications in Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Georgia takes an annual registration by April 1 for $60, and North Carolina an annual report by April 15 for $200. Tennessee takes an annual report on the first day of the fourth month after its fiscal year end for $300, and Florida an annual report by May 1 for $139.

The finance lead tracked three of the four, and left Florida to a former colleague's calendar. Florida's published late penalty for a missed annual report is $400, more than the filing itself, and it is not waived for a first offense. Total avoidable cost that year: $400, plus two days of work reconstructing which entity owned which registration.

Example 3: Hollis Vane Studio LLC, a two-year cycle misread

Hollis Vane is a design studio formed in New York with a second registration in California. New York takes a biennial statement in the anniversary month for $9. California takes a Statement of Information from an LLC every two years for $20, alongside the $800 minimum franchise tax that the Franchise Tax Board bills separately. The founder set an annual reminder for both, filed the New York statement a year early, and read the state's rejection as confirmation that nothing was due.

Two years later the California statement was delinquent, and California's penalty for a delinquent Statement of Information is $250. The lesson is not that the fees are large. It is that a $9 filing and a $20 filing, between them, gated a $250 penalty and a week of remediation before a bank would open a second account.

What Happens When a Deadline Slips

The consequence of a missed report is a sequence rather than a single event, and the cost climbs at each step.

Stage one, the late fee. It is charged automatically and it varies enormously. Florida charges $400 for a late annual report. California charges $250 for a delinquent Statement of Information. Delaware charges a $200 penalty plus interest of 1.5% per month on both its corporate franchise tax and its annual tax for LLCs, a figure confirmed on the Delaware Division of Corporations tax page on August 12, 2026. Several states charge nothing at all and simply move you to a delinquent status, which is worse than a fee because there is no invoice to prompt you.

Stage two, loss of good standing. The entity still exists, but the state will no longer certify it. That blocks the certificate a bank, a landlord, or an acquirer asks for. In many states it also blocks any other filing you might want to make, including an amendment or a new foreign qualification. Deals do not usually collapse at this stage. They slow down by two to six weeks.

Stage three, administrative dissolution. Most states reach it somewhere between six months and three years after the first missed report. The obligations of the business survive it, the liability shield becomes arguable for the period the entity was dissolved, and in a number of states your name is released for someone else to take.

Getting back is a separate filing with its own fee, plus every missed report and every accumulated penalty. Our guide to reinstating an administratively dissolved LLC walks the sequence. A reinstatement that clears three missed years in a mid-fee state routinely lands between $500 and $1,500 before anyone bills for time.

Building a Calendar That Survives a Busy Quarter

A compliance calendar that works has one row per entity per jurisdiction, and each row carries five fields: the jurisdiction, the state entity number, the filing name, the due date, and the year it is next due. The entity number matters more than it looks, because it is what you search on when the company name has been changed, abbreviated or duplicated on the register.

Set the reminder 45 days ahead rather than seven. That is enough time to absorb a rejection for a name mismatch or an agent address that no longer matches the state's record, and still file before the date. Where the state opens its window early, file in the first week it opens. The fee is identical and the risk disappears.

Review the registered agent line once a year at the same time. A stale agent is the most common reason a courtesy notice never arrives, and an agent resignation in most states starts a clock of its own. Finally, before any financing, lease or acquisition, pull a current certificate in every state where you are registered rather than only at home. Almost every unpleasant discovery in this area is a foreign registration that quietly lapsed while the domestic filing stayed current.

Disclosure. File.Business is a private filing service, not a government agency and not a law firm. We prepare and submit filings at your direction. Nothing on this page is legal or tax advice. Filing fees, deadlines, and statutory references are current as of the last-updated date shown above and can change. Confirm current requirements with the relevant state agency before you file.