Delaware LLC Annual Tax Is $400, Not $300 (2026 Figures)

Most formation guides still print $300. The Delaware Division of Corporations says $400, due on or before June 1, with a $200 penalty plus 1.5 percent interest per month if you miss it. Here is the official wording, what the first payment looks like, and what three years cost compared with Wyoming and New Mexico.

Updated October 18, 2026 · official sources cited at the bottom · no legal or tax guidance

The official figure: $400, read on the state's own page

The Delaware Division of Corporations publishes the rule on its page about taxes for alternative entities. The wording, read on October 18, 2026, is: a limited liability company is "required to pay an annual tax of $400.00". The same page adds that the annual taxes for the prior year "are due on or before June 1st".

The formation document confirms it. The official LLC formation PDF on corpfiles.delaware.gov, which states that the fee to file the Certificate of Formation is $110, repeats the $400 annual tax in the same document.

If you plan a Delaware LLC on a $300 figure, you are short by a third every year. That is the whole reason this page exists.

Why so many sites still say $300

The $300 figure was the Delaware LLC annual tax for a long time, and it is still in the memory of most formation guides. On October 18, 2026, a Wolters Kluwer / CT Corporation article dated April 8, 2026, and the comparison pages of doola, Bizee and ZenBusiness still displayed $300.

These are large companies with content teams. The number is wrong on their pages anyway, because a published article is rarely re-checked against the state site after it ranks. The lesson is not that those companies are careless. It is that an amount without a date and a source cannot be trusted, including on this site, which is why every figure here carries both.

If you read "$300" anywhere, look for the date of the page. Then open the Delaware page linked at the bottom of this guide and read the number yourself. It takes a minute.

June 1, "for the prior year": how the first payment falls

The tax is due "on or before June 1st" for the prior year. In practice: an LLC formed at any point in 2026 owes its first $400 by June 1, 2027. The amount is flat. It does not depend on revenue, assets, or the month of formation. An LLC formed in December pays the same $400 the following June as one formed in January.

There is no annual report attached to the payment. Delaware LLCs pay the tax and nothing else at the state level. This is sometimes sold as "no paperwork", which is true for the state and false for the federal side: a foreign-owned single-member LLC still files a pro forma Form 1120 with Form 5472 attached every year, in every state.

The penalty: $200 plus 1.5 percent per month, and lost good standing

The official page is explicit. Failure to pay "will result in a penalty of $200.00 plus 1.5% interest per month on tax and penalty". Two consequences follow.

• The bill grows every month. The interest applies to the $400 tax and the $200 penalty together, so to a $600 base. Six months late, with simple interest at 1.5 percent per month, that is $54 of interest on top of the $600, before any other fee.
• The LLC loses its good standing. Until the balance is cleared, the state will not issue a certificate of good standing. Banks, payment processors and counterparties sometimes ask for that certificate. A late $400 can therefore block a business step that has nothing to do with Delaware.

Formation fee: $110, plus $50 for an optional certified copy

The Certificate of Formation costs $110 to file, according to the official formation PDF read on October 18, 2026. A certified copy of the filed certificate is optional and costs $50. Some banks ask for the certified copy, most accept the stamped filing. Whether you need it depends on who you will show it to.

Billionnaire's Delaware setup is $690, with the $110 state fee and the Form SS-4 fax transmission to the IRS included, and the registered agent for year 1. The $400 annual tax stays yours to pay to the state each year; no platform pays it for you, and ours does not pretend to.

Three-year state cost: Delaware vs Wyoming vs New Mexico

The table counts what the state itself charges an LLC formed in year 1, through the end of year 3, official figures read on October 18, 2026. The registered agent is not included; it is mandatory in all three states and costs $199 per year with Billionnaire from year 2.

The Wyoming license tax is $60 or $0.0002 per dollar of assets located in Wyoming, whichever is greater; for an LLC with no Wyoming assets, it is $60. New Mexico's Secretary of State publishes no annual report requirement for LLCs, and the LLC Act contains no such provision; we verified this on October 18, 2026 and we phrase it that way, not as "zero obligations", because the registered agent remains mandatory.

What Delaware gives you for the extra $660

Over three years, a Delaware LLC costs $660 more in state charges than a Wyoming LLC, and $860 more than a New Mexico LLC. Founders who pay that difference usually do so because Delaware's business law is long established and widely known by counterparties, investors and attorneys. New Mexico's LLC law, by contrast, has a thinner track record, which is a fair point to weigh.

Whether that is worth $400 a year for your business is not something a filing platform can decide for you. What we can do is state the numbers correctly, which the first page of search results does not. If you are still choosing a state, our guide on whether you need an LLC at all and the 3-year cost comparison across formation services are the two pages to read next.

The federal filing that applies in all three states

Whatever the state, a single-member LLC owned by a non-resident must file a pro forma Form 1120 with Form 5472 attached every year, even with no income. The due date is April 15 for a calendar-year entity, October 15 with an extension requested on Form 7004. The penalty for not filing is $25,000, and a further $25,000 applies if the failure continues more than 90 days after the IRS notice.

So a Delaware LLC has two dates to hold: April 15 for the federal filing and June 1 for the state tax. The EIN needed for the federal filing is obtained with Form SS-4, by fax for an owner without a Social Security number; the procedure is in our guide How to Get an EIN Without an SSN.

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