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How to Move an LLC Out of New Jersey (Domestication, $75)

Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: New Jersey does permit it, in both directions, under N.J.S.A. 42:2C-82; and unlike several sibling states, New Jersey’s own statute actually uses the word ‘domestication,’ so there’s no keyword-search trap here. The outbound filing fee is a single $75, not the roughly $225 some formation-service pages describe. This page covers the entity-law half only.

What New Jersey’s statute actually says

N.J.S.A. 42:2C-82.b provides that ‘A limited liability company may become a foreign limited liability company pursuant to this section, sections 83 through 85 of this act, and a plan of domestication, if: (1) the foreign governing statute authorizes the domestication; (2) the domestication is not prohibited by the law of the jurisdiction that enacted the governing statute; and (3) the limited liability company complies with the foreign governing statute in effecting the domestication.’ That reciprocity structure mirrors the inbound provision exactly. There’s no naming trap to unwind here since the statute itself uses ‘domestication’ throughout: the only real source of confusion is that New Jersey’s practical filing form (CD-100/CD-101) uses the combined label ‘Conversion/Domestication,’ collapsing a distinction the statute itself preserves.

What the filing costs

For an outbound move, a New Jersey LLC becoming a foreign LLC files Form CD-101 (‘Certificate of Conversion/Domestication’) with the Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services. That single filing also formally surrenders the LLC’s New Jersey certificate of formation, per N.J.S.A. 42:2C-85.c, so the outbound move requires only one filing and one $75 fee, not a separate domestication filing plus a separate new-formation filing.

That is the entity-law filing fee only. It is not the cost of leaving, and anyone who tells you the cost of leaving New Jersey 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 New Jersey’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 New Jersey 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 New Jersey, and why it is wrong

Several formation-service pages describe New Jersey LLC domestication as costing roughly $225 total, apparently stacking a separate ~$100 ‘Articles of Domestication’ fee on top of a separate ~$125 new Certificate of Formation fee.

The current official CD-101 form states a single $75 filing fee, and its own instructions say the filed certificate satisfies the certificate-of-formation/surrender requirement: domestication in New Jersey is one filing at one fee, not two filings totaling roughly triple that.

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 Delaware page. 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.

  • New Jersey: https://pub.njleg.gov/bills/2012/PL12/50_.PDF. Statutory text, independently attempted re-verification 2026-09-03: the pub.njleg.gov session-law PDF did not yield readable section text, and a law.justia.com cross-check was blocked. Could not independently confirm this session; using the dataset’s verbatim-quoted text as read 2026-08-12..

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