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How to Move an LLC to Vermont (Domestication, $175)

Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: yes: an LLC formed in another state can become a Vermont LLC and stay the same legal entity, keeping its EIN, formation date and contracts. Vermont’s statute calls the mechanism domestication, at 11 V.S.A. § 4152(a). Vermont added this mechanism relatively recently, in 2015, so a source dated before that year describing Vermont as non-permitting would have been correct for its time but is stale today.

What Vermont’s statute actually says

11 V.S.A. § 4152(a), part of Subchapter 10 (Merger, Conversion, and Domestication) added by 2015, No. 17, § 2, authorizes a foreign limited liability company to become a Vermont LLC under a plan of domestication, conditioned on the foreign LLC’s own governing statute authorizing the domestication, the domestication not being prohibited by that governing jurisdiction’s law, and the foreign LLC complying with its governing statute in effecting it. This is a reciprocity condition tied to the origin state’s own law. Vermont’s separate conversion sections, at 11 V.S.A. §§ 4141 through 4147 in the same subchapter, only change entity type and do not by themselves change jurisdiction, so they are a different mechanism from domestication. Before the 2015 amendment, Vermont’s LLC act had no jurisdiction-change mechanism at all.

What the filing is and what it costs

The inbound filing is Articles of Domestication, form LLC-3(DOM), filed with the Vermont Secretary of State under 11 V.S.A. § 4154 at a base fee of $20. Because the form requires a fully executed Vermont Articles of Organization to be attached for the resulting domestic entity, the practical inbound total is that $20 plus the separate $155 Articles of Organization fee under 11 V.S.A. § 4023, for a combined $175.

That is the entity-law filing fee only. Registered agent, foreign qualification in any state where you still do business, and any tax clearance the state you are leaving demands are all separate.

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 leavingWhy there is no route outWhat the code offers instead
Delawarethe statute affirmatively limits it6 Del. C. § 18-209
Kentuckynothing in the code permits itKRS 275.345 to 275.365
Massachusettsthe statute affirmatively limits itMass. Gen. Laws ch. 156C, § 59(b)
Missourinothing in the code permits itMo. Rev. Stat. §§ 347.127 to 347.135
New Mexiconothing in the code permits itNMSA 1978 § 53-19-62
New Yorknothing in the code permits itNY LLC Law § 1001(b), certificate of merger under § 1003
South Carolinathe statute affirmatively limits itS.C. Code Ann. § 33-44-904
Washingtonthe statute affirmatively limits itRCW 25.15.416 to 25.15.431
West Virginianothing in the code permits itW. 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 move-to-another-state guide, which covers Delaware’s route directly. 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.

What this page does not tell you

This is entity law. It does not tell you whether the IRS will treat your Vermont LLC as a continuation for federal tax purposes, what happens to your EIN, or what the state you are leaving will want in tax clearance before it lets the entity go. Those are real questions with different sources behind them, and we would rather leave the gap visible than fill it with something we have not read. 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, with the statute behind every cell, is on the domestication states list; the three routes are compared on how to move an LLC to another state.

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.

  • Vermont: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/fullchapter/11/025. Statutory text, read 2026-08-12 (statute-tier, official government source); independently re-read on 2026-09-04 from legislature.vermont.gov (the certificate problem the dataset flagged for this site did not recur). Section 4152(a)-(b) matched the dataset verbatim, including the drafting oddity in (b) that literally repeats the phrase the foreign limited liability company’s governing statute rather than referring in plain terms to the destination state’s law. Separately re-fetched the Vermont Secretary of State’s live fee schedule at sos.vermont.gov/business-services/fees-statutes, HTTP 200, which still lists Articles of Domestication at $20.00 under section 4154 and Articles of Organization at $155.00 under section 4023, confirming both components of the $175 combined inbound figure..

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