Updated August 12, 2026. Quick answer. To dissolve an LLC in Illinois you file the Statement of Termination, and it can be filed online or on paper. Fee: $5. Illinois requires no tax-clearance certificate to accept the filing. Until that filing is accepted the LLC still legally exists — and whatever Illinois charges an LLC each year keeps accruing against it.
What you file in Illinois, and what it costs
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Filing | Statement of Termination, Form LLC-35.15 — filed with the Illinois Secretary of State, Department of Business Services |
| Fee | $5 |
| How you can file | both — SOS ‘Incorporate a Business or Terminate an LLC’ page (ilsos.gov/departments/business-services/incorporation.html) offers online LLC termination; paper Form LLC-35.15 is filed in duplicate by mail or in person. Standard paper processing 7-10 days. |
| Tax clearance | not required |
| Statute | 805 ILCS 180/35-1 (events of dissolution); 805 ILCS 180/35-15 (statement of termination); 805 ILCS 180/50-10 (fees); 805 ILCS 180/35-25 (administrative dissolution) |
Illinois is effectively one state filing: dissolution itself occurs under 805 ILCS 180/35-1 (member consent/operating-agreement events, no state filing), and after winding up the LLC files the Statement of Termination under 805 ILCS 180/35-15, which requires the LLC name, a post office address for service copies, and ‘a statement that the limited liability company has been terminated.’ Paper filings go in duplicate originals.
On the fee. Statutory fee: 805 ILCS 180/50-10 — ‘Filing a statement of termination or application for withdrawal, $5.’ Same $5 online or paper; optional expedited (24-hour) service is an additional $50, in person at Springfield or Chicago only. (Older third-party pages still citing $100/$150 predate the December 2017 LLC fee reductions.)
Tax clearance in Illinois
No tax-clearance certificate is required to file in Illinois. That is not the same as owing nothing — it means the state will accept the filing without a revenue-agency sign-off first.
No tax clearance is required to file an LLC Statement of Termination: 805 ILCS 180/35-15 lists the complete required contents (name, service address, statement of termination) with no Department of Revenue clearance, and the SOS LLC termination instructions describe only the form and $5 fee. Caveat: the ilsos.gov instruction pages themselves repeatedly timed out during this research (see row notes), so the negative rests on the statute plus SOS page excerpts surfaced in search.
Do not just walk away
Closing the business is not closing the entity. Miss the $75 annual report and the SOS may administratively dissolve the LLC; a $100 late penalty accrues first ($100 plus $100 for each year or fraction from the second year of delinquency); dissolved LLC may act only to wind up; reinstatement requires back reports, fees and penalties
805 ILCS 180/35-25: grounds for administrative dissolution include failure to ‘file its annual report and pay its fee … before the first day of the anniversary month.’ 805 ILCS 180/50-10 sets the $75 annual report fee; 805 ILCS 180/50-15 imposes the $100-plus penalty when the default is not corrected before the first day of the second month following the anniversary month. Reinstatement under 805 ILCS 180/35-40 requires all delinquent reports, fees and penalties. Illinois has no LLC franchise tax, so accrual is the report fees plus penalties.
Closing the tax accounts
Check the ‘final return’ box on the final return for each Illinois tax type and request closure of each tax account via MyTax Illinois
Illinois Department of Revenue, ‘Closing Your Business’ (tax.illinois.gov/businesses/close.html): contact IDOR regarding liabilities and ‘indicate it is your final return by checking the box on the form’ for each tax type; accounts are closed in MyTax Illinois via ‘View more account options’ → Account Maintenance → request close.
Before you file
- The order the steps go in — internal decision, creditors and distributions, the state filing, the final returns, then the registrations you are still paying for.
- What an LLC costs to keep alive in Illinois — the bill that keeps running until this filing lands.
- What dissolution costs in all 51 jurisdictions — the fee, the filing route and the tax-clearance flag, side by side.
- What happens if you simply stop filing — administrative dissolution is the walk-away trap happening to you rather than by you.
We do not form or dissolve LLCs, sell filing services, or take a commission from anyone who does. No advertising appears on this page and we earn nothing from it.
Sources and limits
805 ILCS 180/35-1 (events of dissolution); 805 ILCS 180/35-15 (statement of termination); 805 ILCS 180/50-10 (fees); 805 ILCS 180/35-25 (administrative dissolution). Fee, form and procedure read 2026-08-10 from the statute source. The fee and the tax-clearance position were re-checked against 805 ILCS 180/50-10 on the General Assembly’s own site, re-read 2026-08-12.
Research note. ACCESS FAILURES: ilsos.gov pages repeatedly timed out (60s) during research — https://www.ilsos.gov/departments/business-services/termination/llcinstructions.html, https://www.ilsos.gov/publications/business_services/llc.html, and the Form LLC-35.15 PDF at https://www.ilsos.gov/content/dam/publications/pdf_publications/llc3515.pdf. Row is therefore anchored to the ILCS statutory text on ilga.gov (fully verified) plus SOS page content surfaced via search excerpts. IDOR steps: https://tax.illinois.gov/businesses/close.html.
Honest gap. This page covers the state filing that ends the entity, its fee and its tax-clearance condition. It does not cover creditor claims against a dissolved LLC, disputes between members, the tax treatment of a final distribution, reinstatement after an administrative dissolution, or withdrawal from any other state you registered in — each of those has its own rules. General information, not legal or tax advice. See methodology and corrections.