Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: a Kentucky for-profit corporation dissolves by filing Articles of Dissolution under KRS 271B.14-030 for $40, and Kentucky does not gate the filing on a tax clearance certificate.
The filing, and what Kentucky calls it
Kentucky’s Articles of Dissolution combine authorization and filing content in one section, KRS 271B.14-030, filed with the Secretary of State.
The tax clearance question
Kentucky does not gate the Articles of Dissolution on a tax clearance certificate. No Department of Revenue tax-clearance certificate is a precondition to filing. KRS 271B.14-030 requires the Secretary of State to forward a copy of the filed articles to the Department of Revenue after filing, not before, and the state’s own business-exit guidance describes a final tax return as a follow-on step rather than a filing gate. (KRS 271B.14-030; Kentucky One Stop, exiting-a-business guidance) That does not erase the corporation’s final tax filings; it just means the Secretary of State’s office is not the one checking for them before accepting the paperwork.
Creditors and the claims window
Kentucky makes available, but does not require, a formal notice-to-known-and-unknown-creditors procedure, with a 120-day claims-bar window. Optional. Known claims (KRS 271B.14-060): a deadline not less than 120 days from the notice’s effective date, consistent with the Revised Model Business Corporation Act default that Kentucky’s corporation law is known to track, though a clean direct-fetch of the statute’s full text was not obtained this session. Unknown claims (KRS 271B.14-070): optional newspaper publication, barred unless a proceeding commences within 2 years. (KRS §§ 271B.14-060, 271B.14-070)
What the filing costs
The Articles of Dissolution carries a $40 filing fee.
What this page does not answer
Dissolving the entity at the state level and closing it out with the IRS are two separate processes. A final federal return, IRS Form 966 in some circumstances, and canceling the EIN are governed by federal law, not by Kentucky’s corporation statute, and this cluster does not source them. We have the state-filing answer at primary and the federal-closeout answer not at all.
This page sells nothing and links to no filing service. Dissolving a corporation is a filing-desk task with a statutory answer, and the answer is either in the state’s code and the Secretary of State’s own instructions or it is not.
This page covers a for-profit business corporation. If you are closing an LLC in Kentucky instead, the filing, fee and statute are different: see dissolving an LLC in Kentucky.
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; those are the only publishers of the competing versions.
- Kentucky Secretary of State, business filing fees: https://www.sos.ky.gov/bus/business-filings/Pages/Fees.aspx
- Kentucky One Stop, leaving/closing a business: https://onestop.ky.gov/manage/Pages/leaving.aspx