Skip to content
Independent money guidance
Clear Money Guide
Start here
Menu

How to Reinstate a Corporation in Arkansas (Application for Reinstatement Following Administrative…)

Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: a dissolved Arkansas corporation reinstates by filing Application for Reinstatement Following Administrative Dissolution, filed with the Arkansas Secretary of State, Business and Commercial Services Division; where the underlying trigger is franchise-tax delinquency (the most common cause per the Secretary of State’s own FAQ), reinstatement instead runs through the Secretary of State’s Corporate Franchise Tax office by filing delinquent franchise tax reports, with no separate reinstatement form under Ark. Code Ann. §§ 4-27-1420 to 4-27-1422 (Arkansas Business Corporation Act of 1987, administrative dissolution and reinstatement); Ark. Code Ann. §§ 26-54-111, 26-54-112, 26-54-107 (Arkansas Corporate Franchise Tax Act of 1979, charter revocation, reinstatement, and penalty/interest for franchise-tax delinquency), but only within 2 years of dissolution.

If you’d rather have the reinstatement filed for you

Bizee can prepare and file the Arkansas reinstatement paperwork described above on your behalf. State filing fees and any back taxes owed are separate, and you pay those directly either way.

Bizee’s BBB rating, verified directly against BBB’s own listing on September 2, 2026: a C, not accredited. BBB’s own finding: the business “has failed to resolve underlying cause(s) of a pattern of complaints,” with 83 complaints filed. Most complaints we found described difficulty canceling recurring services and strict refund policies, worth knowing before you hand over a card for the year-two renewal. Check BBB’s current listing yourself before you buy; a rating we didn’t just verify is worse than none.

We earn a commission if you purchase through this link, between $20 and $175 depending on which service you buy, disclosed here rather than left vague. This does not change the price you pay. We are not a law firm and this is not legal advice. Affiliate Disclosure.

See Bizee’s current pricing

Opens on Bizee’s site in a new tab.

The filing, and what Arkansas calls it

Arkansas calls this ‘reinstatement following administrative dissolution.’ Administrative dissolution under the Business Corporation Act is triggered by failure to pay franchise taxes or penalties, failure to file the annual franchise tax report, lack of a registered agent, or expiration of the corporation’s stated duration, each after a 60-day cure notice from the Secretary of State. To reverse it, the corporation applies to the Secretary of State reciting the dissolution date, that the grounds no longer exist, that its name still qualifies, and a certificate from state tax authorities that all taxes are paid; the Secretary then cancels the dissolution certificate and reinstatement relates back to the dissolution date. The Secretary of State’s own FAQ states the single most common reason for dissolution/revocation is unpaid franchise tax, which the separate Corporate Franchise Tax Act resolves simply by filing all delinquent franchise tax reports and paying back tax, penalties, and interest, with no separate reinstatement application.

How long you have to reinstate

Arkansas does not let a dissolved corporation reinstate forever. You have just 2 years from the dissolution or revocation date; miss it and the only path back is forming a new entity from scratch, losing the original formation date and history. Under the Business Corporation Act, an application for reinstatement following administrative dissolution must be filed within two (2) years after the effective date of dissolution (§ 4-27-1422(a)). Separately, where the charter was proclaimed ‘revoked’ for franchise-tax delinquency under the Corporate Franchise Tax Act, § 26-54-112 sets a longer five-year outer deadline running from the date of revocation. Because franchise-tax delinquency is the most common trigger in practice, the five-year clock applies in most real cases even though the two-year clock is written directly into § 4-27-1422. (Ark. Code Ann. § 4-27-1422(a); cf. Ark. Code Ann. § 26-54-112)

What you must pay before it goes through

Arkansas will not reinstate the corporation until every year it sat delinquent is paid for. The Business Corporation Act application must include a certificate from the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration reciting that all taxes owed by the corporation have been paid. Where the underlying problem is franchise-tax delinquency, reinstatement additionally requires filing every delinquent annual franchise tax report and paying all back franchise tax, plus a $25 penalty per delinquent year and 10% annual interest on the tax and penalty from the original due date until paid, capped at twice the tax owed for any one year. (Ark. Code Ann. §§ 4-27-1422(a)(4), 26-54-107, 26-54-112)

Whether your name is still yours

Whether Arkansas protects a dissolved corporation’s name against a new filer during the dissolved period was not independently confirmed this session; Could not find a primary Arkansas source directly addressing whether another entity can register or reserve an administratively dissolved corporation’s name while it remains dissolved-but-not-terminated. Confirmed: a reinstating corporation’s name must still satisfy the general ‘distinguishable upon the records of the Secretary of State’ standard at the time of reinstatement, and an administratively dissolved corporation ‘continues its corporate existence’ rather than being struck from the record – but neither provision states outright whether a third party can claim the name in the interim.. (Ark. Code Ann. §§ 4-27-401, 4-27-1421(c) (name-risk conclusion not confirmed))

What the filing costs

The Arkansas Secretary of State’s domestic-corporation forms/fees page does not list a distinct ‘reinstatement following administrative dissolution’ filing fee for business corporations. Under the franchise-tax revocation track there is reportedly no separate filing fee beyond back taxes/penalties/interest, but this could not be independently confirmed on an official fee schedule this session, so left null.

What this page does not answer

Reinstating the entity at the state level and squaring things up with the IRS are two separate processes. Late federal returns, penalty abatement requests, and reinstating a lapsed EIN’s associated accounts are governed by federal law, not by Arkansas’s corporation statute, and this page does not source them. We have the state-filing answer at primary and the federal-cleanup answer not at all.

This page covers a for-profit business corporation. If you are reinstating an LLC in Arkansas instead, the filing, fee and statute are different: see reinstating an LLC in Arkansas.

Sources

Every citation on this page is statutory or the Secretary of State’s own official filing instructions. No formation service, no registered-agent marketing page and no aggregator is cited anywhere in this cluster as a source of law; those are the only publishers of the competing versions.

See the filing option on this page