Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: Iowa permits it, in both directions, under Iowa Code § 489.1051(1): the statute itself uses the word ‘domestication,’ so there is no keyword-search trap. The catch for Iowa is a 2023 recodification: the chapter’s section numbers and even its own name changed, so older sources citing the pre-2023 numbering are citing dead law. The Statement of Domestication filing fee is $50. This page covers the entity-law half only.
What Iowa’s statute actually says
Section 489.1051(1) reads: ‘By complying with this part, a domestic limited liability company may become a foreign limited liability company if the domestication is authorized by the law of the foreign jurisdiction’: the standard reciprocity condition running against the destination state’s law. 2023 Iowa Acts, chapter 152 restructured chapter 489 and renumbered the domestication provisions to their current §§ 489.1051-489.1056; the source notes attached to each current section read ‘2023 Acts, ch 152.’ The chapter’s own running header changed at the same time, from ‘REVISED UNIFORM LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY ACT’ to ‘UNIFORM LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY ACT.’ A citation to the old §§ 489.1010/489.1011 numbering, or a description of chapter 489 as the ‘Revised’ act, is describing pre-2023 law.
What the filing costs
Outbound, an Iowa LLC files a Statement of Domestication with the Iowa Secretary of State; § 489.1055(2)(d) makes the domesticated entity’s certificate of organization an attachment to that same filing rather than a second document. The LLC Act’s own fee schedule, § 489.122(1)(m), prices ‘Statement of domestication’ at a flat $50, a separate line item from the $50 new-formation Certificate of Organization fee (item (c) on the same schedule) and the $50 Statement of Conversion fee (item (n)); because the organic record is an attachment rather than a stand-alone filing, this reads as a single $50 fee for the outbound move, not a stacked total.
That is the entity-law filing fee only. It is not the cost of leaving, and anyone who tells you the cost of leaving Iowa is a filing fee is selling something.
The part this page does not answer
The reason people search for this is usually not the filing. It is the tax exposure: what Iowa’s own revenue agency does when you leave, whether a final return is due, and whether the state agrees the entity has actually stopped doing business there. Those questions are governed by Iowa tax law and administrative practice, not by the entity-law citation above, and this cluster does not source them. We have the entity-law answer at primary and the tax answer not at all.
Two things worth knowing even so, both the general shape rather than a state-specific finding: changing the entity’s state of organization does not by itself end an obligation to register as a foreign LLC anywhere you still do business, and a state’s revenue department is a separate counterparty from its filing office. If you are moving to cut a tax bill, the entity move is the easy half.
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.
What is commonly published about Iowa, and why it is wrong
Older mirror sites and cached tables citing Iowa Code §§ 489.1010 / 489.1011, or describing chapter 489 as the ‘Revised Uniform Limited Liability Company Act,’ as the current domestication authority.
2023 Iowa Acts, ch. 152 repealed and renumbered those provisions as §§ 489.1051-489.1056 and dropped ‘Revised’ from the chapter’s own name; the current, live citation is § 489.1051, not the old numbering.
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 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.
The full 51-jurisdiction table 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.
- Iowa: https://codes.findlaw.com/ia/title-xii-business-entities-chs-486-504c/ia-code-sect-489-1051/. Statutory text, independently re-verified 2026-09-03, matches dataset.