How to Reinstate an LLC in Nevada: Two Fees, One Trap, and a Five-Year Wall

Updated August 24, 2026. Quick answer: Nevada revokes an LLC’s charter automatically about a year after a missed annual list, and reinstating it costs a flat $300 on top of every back fee and penalty. That $300 usually isn’t the real trap. Nevada requires a second, separate filing due at the same moment as the annual list: the state business license, priced at $200 a year (more for corporations). Miss that fee alone, even with the annual list itself filed and paid, and the law treats the company as if it never filed the annual list at all, triggering the identical default-to-revocation machinery. Worse, the instant the charter is revoked, Nevada releases the company’s name to anyone; there is no grace period. Reinstatement stays available for five straight years of revocation; after that, this statute closes the door for good.

The one-year clock, and the five-year wall

Every Nevada LLC files an annual list of managers or managing members and pays a $150 fee, due each year by the last day of the month of its formation anniversary. Miss it, and the company is immediately “in default” with a $75 penalty added. Default does not revoke the charter by itself; that happens on a fixed schedule roughly a year later:

“On the first day of the first anniversary of the month following the month in which the filing was required, the charter of the company is revoked and its right to transact business is forfeited.”

NRS 86.274(2)

From there, the statute gives a long runway back, but not an unlimited one. A company whose charter has been revoked and stays revoked for five straight years can no longer be reinstated under this section at all:

“the charter must not be reinstated.”

NRS 86.276(4)

That five-year language sits right after the rule that a revoked company’s charter “must not be reinstated” once five consecutive years pass, the only hard outer limit in the whole reinstatement scheme, and the point past which a business has to form a brand-new entity instead. Compare that to Ohio’s two-year window or New Hampshire’s open-ended late-reinstatement path: five years is generous by comparison, but it is still a wall, not a suggestion, and nothing in the statute allows the Secretary of State to waive it for hardship or good cause.

Two filings share one due date, but not one consequence

Nevada bundles a second obligation into the same moment as the annual list: every entity required to file an annual list must also obtain, and then annually renew, a state business license. The renewal fee is set separately, in a different chapter of the same title:

“Be accompanied by a fee in the amount of $200, except that if the applicant is a corporation organized pursuant to chapter 78 , 78A or 78B of NRS, or a foreign corporation required to file an initial or annual list with the Secretary of State pursuant to chapter 80 of NRS, the application must be accompanied by a fee of $500;”

NRS 76.100(2)(c)

An LLC’s business license renewal is the $200 figure; the $500 alternative applies only to corporations. The two filings, the $150 annual list and the $200 license renewal, are submitted together, but they are legally distinct duties with a legally identical failure mode. Miss the license renewal specifically, even if the annual list itself is filed and paid on time, and the statute says this:

“Shall be deemed to have not complied with the requirement to file an annual list with the Secretary of State;”

NRS 76.130(4)(a)(2)

That single sentence is the whole trap. A company that paid its $150 annual list on time, in full, but let the $200 business license lapse, is treated by law exactly like a company that filed nothing at all: subject to the same $75-per-year default penalty, the same default-to-revocation clock, and the same reinstatement bill described below. Two separate filings, one shared consequence.

This matters because the two filings can look, from a registered agent’s reminder email or a founder’s own calendar note, like a single task: “file the annual list.” The statute does not treat them as one task. It treats them as two duties that happen to share a due date, and it only takes failing one of them to put the whole company back on the default clock.

What reinstatement costs, and what it stacks on top of

Reinstatement itself carries a flat statutory fee, on top of everything owed for the years the company sat in default:

“A fee of $300 for reinstatement.”

NRS 86.276(1)(b)(3)

That $300 is added to the filing fee and $75 penalty for each year or partial year the list went unfiled, the $200 (or $500) business license fee and its own $100-per-year penalty if that lapsed too, and every dollar has to be current before the state will act at all:

None of these amounts are agency discretion; each one is a specific dollar figure written into Chapter 86 or Chapter 76 themselves, which is part of why they compound so predictably. A company that assumes reinstatement means paying only the headline $300 fee is usually working from an incomplete number.

“Except as otherwise provided in NRS 231.14057, the Secretary of State shall not order a reinstatement unless all delinquent fees and penalties have been paid, and the revocation of the charter occurred only by reason of failure to pay the fees and penalties.”

NRS 86.276(3)

For a company that let two years slip on both filings, that arithmetic runs past $1,600 before the doors reopen, and that is before touching a registered-agent fee or anything owed to the Department of Taxation.

The name is gone the instant you’re revoked

Unlike Ohio, which reserves a cancelled company’s name for a full year, or New Hampshire, which holds it for 120 days, Nevada releases the name the moment the charter is revoked, with no grace period written into the statute at all:

“The name of a limited-liability company whose charter has been revoked, which has merged and is not the surviving entity or whose existence has otherwise terminated is available for use by any other artificial person.”

NRS 86.171(4)

If someone else has already taken the name by the time a company applies to come back, Nevada does not simply block the application; it requires the company to propose a different name for the reinstated entity, unless it obtains the new holder’s written, notarized consent to share it.

Reinstatement erases the gap, when it’s still available

Nevada’s statute does say reinstatement relates back to the date the company’s right to transact business was forfeited, restoring that right as if it had never lapsed, under NRS 86.276(5). This page paraphrases that holding rather than quoting it directly: the copy of NRS Chapter 86 fetched this session was served by the state’s own site in an older Windows-1252 character encoding, and the fetch corrupted a possessive apostrophe inside that exact sentence into an unreadable character. Rather than publish a quote with a garbled character standing in for a real one, this page describes the rule in its own words and flags the fetch problem plainly here.

In practice, that means a reinstated Nevada LLC is not treated as a new company with a gap in its history. Contracts signed, property held and business conducted during the revoked period are not automatically undone or thrown into question once the state accepts the reinstatement filing and payment, the same basic promise Ohio and New Hampshire make in their own reinstatement statutes, just phrased differently.

The five-year bar in the deadline section above is the one hard limit on that relates-back promise: inside the window, reinstatement is a genuine do-over; past five consecutive years of revocation, the statute stops offering one under this section at all.

What this page does not do

• It does not quote NRS 86.276(5)’s relates-back clause verbatim. The statute’s own text on this page (leg.state.nv.us) is served in Windows-1252 encoding; our retrieval corrupted the possessive apostrophe in “company’s right” into an unreadable character. The holding is paraphrased instead of quoted for that reason, and it is otherwise a plain reading of the subsection.
• It does not confirm the current fee independently through the Secretary of State’s own reinstatement page beyond the statutory amounts read directly from NRS 86.263, 86.264, 86.272, 86.274, 86.276 and NRS 76.100/76.130, which are complete and internally cross-consistent on their face.
• It is not legal advice.

Related: what a Nevada LLC costs to keep, how to dissolve a Nevada LLC on purpose, and annual report requirements by state. Other states in this series: Ohio, which reserves a cancelled name for a full year, and Michigan, which also releases the name instantly but never actually dissolves the company.

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.