How to Move an LLC to Another State (Domestication, Merger, or Neither)

Updated August 17, 2026. Quick answer: there are three ways to move an LLC to another state, and they are not equally good. If both states allow it, domestication moves the same legal entity — same EIN, same formation date, same contracts and bank accounts. If either end blocks it, merger into a newly formed entity in the destination state is the fallback. Dissolving and re-forming is the third option and it is almost always the worst one. Most advice names the third as the default; it should be the last resort.

The three routes, worst to best

RouteWhat happens to the entityWhen you use it
Domestication or conversionThe same entity continues under a new state’s law. Formation date, EIN, contracts and accounts carry across.Both states have a statutory route. This is the case for most corridors.
MergerA new entity is formed in the destination state and the old one merges into it. Rights and liabilities pass by operation of law, but the survivor is a new entity, not a continuation.Either end lacks a route — which is nine origin states and eight destinations.
Dissolve and re-formThe old entity ends. The new one starts from nothing: new formation date, new EIN, contracts reassigned by hand.Rarely necessary. Every no-route state has a merger path instead.

The difference between the second and third rows is the practical point of this whole cluster. Merger keeps contracts and (usually) the EIN alive in a way dissolution does not, and every state that lacks a domestication statute still has a merger statute that reaches foreign LLCs. There is nearly always a better answer than starting over.

First, find out whether your two states allow it

43 of 51 jurisdictions permit an LLC to come in; 42 permit one to leave. The full table, with the statute behind every cell, is on the 51-jurisdiction list. The short version is that the answer is usually yes, and that the published lists disagree about it because they count the word rather than the function — 18 states run exactly this mechanism under the caption conversion and get miscounted as states that forbid it.

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 275.350 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.

Some statutes only work if the other state agrees

A large minority of the permitting statutes are conditional: they authorise the transaction only if the other jurisdiction’s law also authorises it. The states whose text carries that condition explicitly are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Hawaii, Maine, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Wyoming — some inbound, some outbound, some both. It rarely bites, because the common case is two states that both permit it. It bites hard when one end is on the no-route list, which is the situation the condition exists to describe.

What it costs

The entity-law filing fee runs from $17 in Utah to $350 in Nevada — a twentyfold spread, and not the spread most people expect. Nevada is the dearest in the set and is widely assumed to be cheap. Several routes are two filings rather than one. And the filing fee is not the cost of the move: registered agent, foreign qualification where you still do business in the old state, and any tax clearance the origin state demands all sit outside it. For what formation itself costs by state, see LLC cost by state.

You may not need to move it at all

Two common situations do not call for domestication. If you have simply started doing business in a second state while the entity stays where it is, that is foreign qualification, not a move. If you are keeping property in the old state — a rental, most often — moving the entity may be exactly the wrong step; see moving with a rental property LLC. And if the entity has genuinely finished its work, closing it is cleaner than carrying it to a new state.

Destination guides

What the statute says, what the filing is called and what it costs, for the states people move to most:

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.

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.