Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: you cannot. Washington’s statute affirmatively excludes LLCs from the mechanism that would otherwise do this: RCW 25.15.436(1) lets ‘an organization other than a limited liability company’ convert into a Washington LLC, and RCW 25.15.411(7) defines ‘organization’ to expressly include LLCs, so the ‘other than a limited liability company’ language excludes any LLC, foreign or domestic, from using this section to become a Washington LLC. Washington’s 2015 recodification adopted the Merger and Conversion articles of the uniform LLC act framework but never enacted its separate Domestication part. The route that does work is a merger under RCW 25.15.416 to .431.
Why the answer is no
RCW 25.15.436(1) is explicit: ‘An organization other than a limited liability company may convert into a limited liability company, and a limited liability company may convert into an organization pursuant to this section…’ RCW 25.15.411(7) defines ‘organization’ to include domestic and foreign organizations and lists limited liability company as one of the enumerated types, so the first clause’s ‘other than a limited liability company’ bars any LLC from inbound-converting into a Washington LLC. The outbound half of the same subsection is textually less airtight (it does not repeat the ‘other than an LLC’ qualifier), but Washington’s own Secretary of State practice resolves the ambiguity: the SOS’s itemized ‘Domestic LLC Conversions’ filing catalog lists only entity-TYPE destinations for a converting Washington LLC (for-profit corporation, professional service corporation, social purpose corporation, nonprofit corporation, LP/LLLP, LLP) and offers no out-of-state-LLC or jurisdiction-only destination. This is corroborated by the Uniform Law Commission’s own official comment to the model provision Washington’s language tracks, which distinguishes conversion (entity-type change) from domestication (jurisdiction-only change, ‘the subject of Part 5’), the part Washington never enacted.
The route that does work
Merger into (for inbound) or with (for outbound) a newly formed LLC in the target jurisdiction, under RCW 25.15.416 through .431. RCW 25.15.416(1) lets a Washington LLC merge with one or more other ‘constituent organizations,’ and RCW 25.15.411(7)’s broad definition of ‘organization’ expressly includes foreign organizations, so, unlike Conversion, Merger is available between a Washington LLC and an out-of-state LLC, with either as the surviving entity. Also available per the dataset: simple foreign qualification, registering the out-of-state LLC to transact business in Washington under RCW 25.15.310 et seq. without becoming a Washington domestic entity, or dissolve-and-reform, dissolving in the origin state and forming a fresh Washington LLC. The honest caveat with the merger route is that it does not preserve the exact same legal entity: a new entity is formed and the old one merges out of existence, rather than the original entity continuing under a new jurisdiction as true domestication would.
What is commonly published about Washington
Washington’s own Secretary of State glossary states: ‘Conversion (any profit business entity type): to either change the type of business entity or to change the jurisdiction of the business entity’; read on its own, this line implies a Washington LLC can use ‘conversion’ to change its jurisdiction, i.e. to domesticate.
The same Secretary of State’s itemized ‘Domestic LLC Conversions’ filing catalog, on the LLC & PLLC Filing Resource Page, lists only entity-TYPE conversion destinations for an LLC (for-profit corporation, professional service corporation, social purpose corporation, nonprofit corporation, LP/LLLP, LLP) and offers no jurisdiction-only, LLC-to-out-of-state-LLC filing option, consistent with RCW 25.15.436(1) excluding any LLC from the class of ‘organization’ that can inbound-convert into an LLC. The glossary’s blanket ‘or to change the jurisdiction’ line appears to describe what conversion accomplishes for other Washington entity types (e.g., corporations, which do have jurisdiction-changing conversion), not what it delivers for LLCs specifically, and the page does not draw that distinction.
We would rather be the table that says a widely repeated figure is not in the statute than the table that repeats it.
Check both ends of the move, not just the destination
A move needs two things to be true: your destination has to let the entity in, and your current state has to let it out. Nine states have no statutory route out, so an LLC formed in one of them cannot domesticate anywhere, however welcoming the destination is. That is where most published advice goes wrong; it checks one end.
| State you would be leaving | Why there is no route out | What the code offers instead |
|---|---|---|
| Delaware | the statute affirmatively limits it | 6 Del. C. § 18-209 |
| Kentucky | nothing in the code permits it | KRS 275.345 to 275.365 |
| Massachusetts | the statute affirmatively limits it | Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 156C, § 59(b) |
| Missouri | nothing in the code permits it | Mo. Rev. Stat. §§ 347.127 to 347.135 |
| New Mexico | nothing in the code permits it | NMSA 1978 § 53-19-62 |
| New York | nothing in the code permits it | NY LLC Law § 1001(b), certificate of merger under § 1003 |
| South Carolina | the statute affirmatively limits it | S.C. Code Ann. § 33-44-904 |
| Washington | the statute affirmatively limits it | RCW 25.15.416 to 25.15.431 |
| West Virginia | nothing in the code permits it | W. Va. Code § 31B-9-904, articles of merger under § 31B-9-905 |
Delaware is the surprise on that list and it is not a mistake; see the Delaware page. For the other eight, the substitute is a merger, not a dissolution: form the new entity in the destination state and merge the old one into it. Merger produces a surviving entity rather than a continuation, so it is genuinely not the same thing as domestication, but it keeps far more alive than dissolving does.
This page sells nothing and links to no filing service. Moving an LLC is a filing-desk task with a statutory answer, and the answer is either in your two states’ codes or it is not.
The full 51-jurisdiction table is on the domestication states list.
Sources
Every row on this page is statutory text. No formation service, no registered-agent marketing page and no aggregator is cited anywhere in this cluster; those are the only publishers of the competing versions.
- Washington: https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=25.15.436. Statutory text, read 2026-08-12, independently re-fetched from the same official source and confirmed unchanged, 2026-09-03.