Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: yes: an LLC formed in another state can become a New Jersey LLC and stay the same legal entity, keeping its EIN, formation date and contracts. New Jersey’s statute calls the mechanism domestication, at N.J.S.A. 42:2C-82.a. The filing fee is $75. The catch is at the other end of the move, not this one.
What New Jersey’s statute actually says
The operative provision is N.J.S.A. 42:2C-82.a, and “domestication” is genuinely New Jersey’s own term for this; Article 10, §§ 82-87, is captioned “Domestication” and is textually separate from the act’s “Conversion” sections (§§ 73-81), which govern an entity changing type rather than jurisdiction. The reciprocity condition is explicit and runs both ways: clause (1) requires the foreign LLC’s own governing statute to authorize the domestication, and clause (2) requires that the domestication not be prohibited by the law of the state that enacted that governing statute. The one wrinkle: New Jersey’s own implementing form doesn’t preserve the statute’s conversion/domestication distinction; it’s captioned “Certificate of Conversion/Domestication,” bundling both under one label.
What the filing is and what it costs
Certificate of Conversion/Domestication, Form CD-100 for an inbound New Jersey result, filed with the NJ Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services, and the filing itself satisfies the certificate-of-formation requirement so only one filing and fee is required.
That is the entity-law filing fee only. Registered agent, foreign qualification in any state where you still do business, and any tax clearance the state you are leaving demands are all separate.
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 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.
What is commonly published about New Jersey, and why it is wrong
Several formation-service pages estimate New Jersey LLC domestication costs around $225 total, stacking a separate ~$100 “Articles of Domestication” fee on top of a separate ~$125 new Certificate of Formation fee.
The current official CD-100/CD-101 forms state a single $75 filing fee, and the form’s own instructions confirm the filed certificate satisfies the certificate-of-formation requirement; domestication in New Jersey is one filing at $75, not two filings totaling roughly triple that.
What this page does not tell you
This is entity law. It does not tell you whether the IRS will treat your New Jersey LLC as a continuation for federal tax purposes, what happens to your EIN, or what the state you are leaving will want in tax clearance before it lets the entity go. Those are real questions with different sources behind them, and we would rather leave the gap visible than fill it with something we have not read. 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.
The full 51-jurisdiction table, with the statute behind every cell, 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, read 2026-08-12 (statute-tier, official government source).
- New Jersey Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services, Certificate of Conversion/Domestication, Form CD-100, read 2026-09-06: nj.gov Form CD-100 (PDF). The form the page describes; its own caption carries both words.
Moving the other way? The origin-side rules are different from the destination-side rules, and both have to permit the move: see moving an LLC out of New Jersey.