How to Reinstate an LLC in Arkansas: Two Different Dissolution Statutes Share the Same Filing Office

Updated August 24, 2026. Quick answer: Arkansas’s LLC Act gives a dissolved LLC two years to reinstate (Ark. Code Ann. § 4-38-709), but getting there takes longer than it sounds: a missed fee or annual report only becomes a dissolution ground after six months, and the Secretary of State then serves notice and waits another 60 days before actually dissolving the company. The moment dissolution happens, the LLC’s name is released to anyone who wants it, with no grace period. And Arkansas runs a second, older statute, the Corporate Franchise Tax Act of 1979, which can independently freeze every filing an LLC or its officers try to make until three years of past-due franchise tax is paid, regardless of whether the LLC Act’s own dissolution grounds have been cured.

The clock is slower than it looks: six months, then sixty days

Arkansas’s Uniform Limited Liability Company Act, adopted in 2021, gives the Secretary of State three grounds to start dissolving an LLC administratively, but two of the three don’t even become grounds until six months of nonpayment or nonfiling have passed:

“(a) The Secretary of State may commence a proceeding under subsection (b) to dissolve a limited liability company administratively if the company does not: (1) pay any fee, tax, interest, or penalty required to be paid to the Secretary of State not later than six months after it is due;”

Ark. Code Ann. § 4-38-708(a)(1)

• A late annual report, also unfiled six months after it was due (§4-38-708(a)(2)).
• No registered agent in the state for 60 consecutive days (§4-38-708(a)(3)).

Once one of those grounds exists, the Secretary of State still has to serve notice and give the LLC 60 more days to fix it before dissolution becomes real:

“If a limited liability company, not later than 60 days after service of the notice under subsection (b), does not cure or demonstrate to the satisfaction of the Secretary of State the nonexistence of each ground determined by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State shall administratively dissolve the company by signing a statement of administrative dissolution that recites the grounds for dissolution and the effective date of dissolution.”

Ark. Code Ann. § 4-38-708(c)

Add it up and an LLC that missed one annual report typically has roughly eight months of runway, six months before the ground even exists, plus a 60-day cure window after notice, before it’s actually dissolved. That’s longer than several neighboring states’ total clock, and it’s easy for a reader who saw a same-year dissolution somewhere else to assume Arkansas moves just as fast.

The name doesn’t wait for any of that: it’s gone the moment dissolution is effective

Once the statement of administrative dissolution is signed, one consequence is immediate and unconditional, stated in the same section that sets the six-month and 60-day clocks:

“If a limited liability company is dissolved, administratively or otherwise, the name is available for use by another formed limited liability company, and the dissolved company would be required, upon reinstatement, to use a new name if the prior name was taken.”

Ark. Code Ann. § 4-38-708(f)

There’s no reservation period, no priority right for the original LLC, and no connection to the two-year reinstatement deadline discussed next. An LLC could reinstate on day 30 of a two-year window and still have lost its name to someone who filed on day 2.

The reinstatement window: two years, and pay everything, past and accrued

Once dissolved, an Arkansas LLC has two years to apply for reinstatement:

“A limited liability company that is administratively dissolved under § 4-38-708 may apply to the Secretary of State for reinstatement not later than two years after the effective date of dissolution.”

Ark. Code Ann. § 4-38-709(a)

The application has to state the LLC’s name at dissolution (and a new one, if the old one is gone), its principal address and registered agent, the dissolution date, and that the grounds no longer exist. But the money side is where this differs from a flat reinstatement fee: Arkansas doesn’t set one. Instead:

“To be reinstated, a limited liability company must pay all fees, taxes, interest, and penalties that were due to the Secretary of State at the time of the company’s administrative dissolution and all fees, taxes, interest, and penalties that would have been due to the Secretary of State while the company was administratively dissolved.”

Ark. Code Ann. § 4-38-709(b)

That includes the $150 annual franchise tax for every year the LLC sat dissolved, not just the year that triggered the dissolution: the bill grows every year reinstatement is delayed, on top of whatever penalties and interest the Secretary of State’s fee schedule adds.

A second, older statute can freeze every filing, independent of curing the LLC Act’s grounds

Arkansas’s franchise tax predates its current LLC Act by four decades. The Arkansas Corporate Franchise Tax Act of 1979 (A.C.A. Title 26, Subtitle 5, Chapter 54) runs its own delinquency track through the same Secretary of State’s office, under different words: not “dissolution,” but “charter forfeiture.” And one section of that older Act reaches every filing an LLC, or a person connected to it, tries to make, regardless of whether the LLC Act’s own §4-38-708 grounds have been fixed:

“No corporation or limited liability company shall be allowed to file any forms or documentation related to that corporation or limited liability company if the corporation or limited liability company owes past-due franchise taxes to the Secretary of State.”

Ark. Code Ann. § 26-54-114(a)

“Past-due” is defined narrowly: only taxes owed three years before the current filing counts. But the second half of the section reaches beyond the delinquent LLC itself, to anyone who ran it:

“No person shall be allowed to file any initial forms or documentation with the Secretary of State to create any legal entity in the State of Arkansas or to obtain authority to do business in the State of Arkansas if that person is substantially connected to any corporation or limited liability company that owes past-due franchise taxes to the Secretary of State.”

Ark. Code Ann. § 26-54-114(b)

“Substantially connected” is defined to include a present or past officer or director. A member who let one LLC lapse on franchise tax and then tries to form a brand-new, unrelated LLC can find that new filing blocked too, until the old franchise tax is paid, a consequence that has nothing to do with §4-38-709’s two-year reinstatement clock and isn’t cured by satisfying it.

Reinstatement, once it happens, is retroactive

Successfully reinstating under §4-38-709 erases the gap for most purposes: the reinstatement relates back to the dissolution date, and the LLC “resumes carrying on its activities and affairs as if the administrative dissolution had not occurred”, with one protection for anyone who relied on the dissolution before learning of the reinstatement, whose rights aren’t disturbed.

What you actually file

An application for reinstatement stating the LLC’s name at dissolution and, if needed, a new compliant name; the principal office address and registered agent’s name and address; the dissolution’s effective date; and a statement that the grounds no longer exist, filed with the Secretary of State, along with payment of every fee, tax, interest charge, and penalty that accrued before and during the dissolution, including the $150 annual franchise tax for each year missed. If a franchise-tax freeze under §26-54-114 is also in play, that separate past-due balance needs to be cleared with the Secretary of State’s Business and Commercial Services division before any of these filings, including the reinstatement application, will go through.

Practically, that means an LLC coming back from three or four years of neglect is settling two ledgers at once: the LLC Act side (the specific fees, taxes, interest, and penalties tied to whatever triggered the §4-38-708 dissolution) and, if it reaches three years past due, the franchise-tax side (the $150-per-year minimum tax, plus whatever the Secretary of State’s schedule adds for lateness). Neither ledger is waived by paying the other, and the reinstatement application itself won’t be accepted while either one is outstanding.

What this page does not do

• It does not resolve how Title 4’s dissolution process and Title 26’s franchise-tax forfeiture process interact in current agency practice. Both statutes are in force and both name LLCs, but no fetchable primary source this session described whether the Secretary of State runs them as one combined process or two separate ones today.
• It does not state a fixed reinstatement filing fee, because the statute doesn’t set one: §4-38-709(b) requires paying everything owed, which varies by how long the LLC sat dissolved.
• It is not legal advice.

Related: dissolving an LLC in Arkansas and Arkansas LLC costs. For the same name-released-immediately pattern in a different state, see Michigan; for another state with no reinstatement deadline at all, see Illinois. For the annual-report side generally, see LLC annual report requirements by state and what happens if you stop filing LLC annual reports.

Sources

Every statement of law on this page is quoted from the text below, as read on August 24, 2026. Each row links the document it was read from.

General consumer information, not financial, tax or legal advice. State rules are as published by the cited source on 2026-08-24 and change; your own facts govern, and a reinstatement question with money on it is one to put to a lawyer or accountant in that state.