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What Does an LLC Cost in Pennsylvania?

Pennsylvania: $125 to form, then $7 a year. That $7 is new, it replaced a decennial report most guides still describe, and it is the entire recurring state bill for an ordinary LLC. The expensive Pennsylvania numbers you see elsewhere belong to restricted professional LLCs and foreign registrations, not to you.

By the LLCForming research teamFees checked Nov 8, 2026

Year one: what you pay to exist

Year-one cost in Pennsylvania	Amount
Certificate of Organization (DSCB:15-8821), Department of State	$125
Docketing Statement (DSCB:15-134A, filed with it)	$0, included
EIN from the IRS	$0
Operating agreement (you write it, not filed)	$0
Total state cost, year one	$125

That $125 is the complete required state charge, the same online as on paper, and nonrefundable. There is no advertising cost to form a domestic LLC, because Pennsylvania does not require advertising for formation. The extras are all optional: expedited in-person service at $100, $300, or $1,000 by speed, and a name reservation at $70 if you choose one. Hiring a Commercial Registered Office Provider is a market purchase if you need one, separate from state charges, and listing your own Pennsylvania street address costs nothing.

Every year after: the cost of staying alive

Recurring cost in Pennsylvania	Amount
Annual report (DSCB:15-146), January 1 to September 30	$7
Annual report, LLC with a not-for-profit purpose	$0
Entity level tax on a pass-through LLC	$0. Capital stock and foreign franchise tax was repealed for tax years after 2015
Decennial report	$0. Repealed by Act 122 of 2022
Typical recurring total	$7/yr

Seven dollars a year is easy to pay and, apparently, easy to forget, which is why the enforcement design matters more than the fee. The Department of State publishes no monetary late fee for the annual report. Instead, failure subjects the association to administrative dissolution, termination, or cancellation and loss of name protection, with enforcement beginning with the reports due in 2027, six months after the due date. A dissolved domestic entity may reinstate with no time limit, paying the reinstatement application fee, $35 if delivered electronically or $40 if not, plus current annual report information and the fee the schedule lists for each delinquent annual report. A foreign association gets no reinstatement at all and must file a new Foreign Registration Statement. During dissolution the name is available to other filers, which is the quiet cost of forgetting a $7 filing.

What drives the Pennsylvania total, year one vs. later

Pennsylvania's year one is a single $125 filing fee that covers both the Certificate of Organization and the docketing statement filed with it, with nothing else owed to the state that year. Later years are driven by one very small, very new number: the $7 annual report that Act 122 of 2022 created, first due in 2025, filed between January 1 and September 30. Seven dollars makes Pennsylvania one of the cheapest recurring states in this guide, cheaper per year than Florida by a wide margin, but the report matters out of proportion to its price, because from the 2027 reports onward, failing to file leads to administrative dissolution. The totals stay low because so much else has been repealed or never applied: the decennial report is gone, the capital stock and foreign franchise tax was eliminated for tax years beginning after December 31, 2015, and a pass-through LLC files no corporate net income tax report. The large Pennsylvania figures in other guides, $700 per member annual registrations and $500 penalties, belong to restricted professional LLCs only, and they are deliberately kept out of the standard total on this page.

The Pennsylvania charges that are not in the standard total, and why

Pennsylvania cost pages go wrong by folding profession specific and situation specific charges into every LLC's total. These are real figures, verified on the Department of State's own pages, and each one applies only in its stated situation:

Charge	Figure	Who it applies to
Certificate of Annual Registration, due April 15	$700 per qualifying member (2026 filing)	Restricted professional LLCs only: chiropractic, dentistry, law, medicine and surgery, optometry, osteopathic medicine and surgery, podiatric medicine, public accounting, psychology, and veterinary medicine. Counted per member who was licensed and had a principal residence in Pennsylvania on December 31 of the reporting year. Missing April 15 creates a UCC lien on company assets; missing May 15 adds a $500 penalty.
Foreign Registration Statement	$250	An LLC formed in another state registering to do business in Pennsylvania, instead of the $125 domestic filing. It then owes the same $7 annual report.
Fictitious name registration (DSCB:54-311)	$70, one time, no renewal	Any LLC trading under a name other than its legal name. Creates no exclusive right to the name.
Change of registered office	$5	Only when the registered office changes.
Closing a domestic LLC that transacted business	$70, or $140 for both filings	Certificate of Termination at $70, filed with tax clearance certificates attached. An optional Certificate of Dissolution beforehand is another $70. See the report page and the dissolution guide.

One tax note completes the picture. The corporate net income tax reaches a Pennsylvania LLC only if the LLC elects to be taxed federally as a C corporation, in which case it files the RCT-101 report. A standard pass-through LLC files no such report, and its members' Pennsylvania personal income tax is an owner level item, not an LLC flat charge.

Run your own version, with an optional registered agent added, in the LLC cost calculator. Every state's year-one and recurring totals sit in one table on the national cost hub, and if a service would act as your agent, the registered agent price tracker follows what that costs at each tracked provider. If you would rather a service handled the filing, the services comparison prices that honestly, renewals included.