Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: a dissolved Massachusetts corporation reinstates by filing Application for Reinstatement Following Administrative Dissolution under M.G.L. c. 156D, § 14.22; 950 CMR 113.47 for $100, with no statutory deadline to do it.
If you’d rather have the reinstatement filed for you
Bizee can prepare and file the Massachusetts reinstatement paperwork described above on your behalf. State filing fees and any back taxes owed are separate, and you pay those directly either way.
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The filing, and what Massachusetts calls it
A domestic business corporation administratively dissolved by the Secretary of the Commonwealth (Corporations Division) may file an Application for Reinstatement Following Administrative Dissolution; there is no filing deadline. The application must confirm the dissolution grounds have been eliminated or did not exist, confirm the corporate name still complies (or attach a name-change amendment), and attach a Massachusetts DOR certificate that all corporate excise taxes and penalties are paid. Reinstatement can be limited to a period of up to one year, or unlimited; unlimited reinstatement additionally requires filing all missing annual reports for the prior 10 fiscal years.
How long you have to reinstate
Massachusetts sets no deadline for reinstating a dissolved corporation. No deadline. The corporation may apply to the secretary of state for reinstatement at any time. That does not mean waiting is free; back fees and penalties keep accruing the whole time the entity sits dissolved. (M.G.L. c.156D § 14.22)
What you must pay before it goes through
Massachusetts will not reinstate the corporation until every year it sat delinquent is paid for. A DOR certificate showing all corporate excise taxes and related penalties are paid (or a pending DOR request for one) must be attached to the application. To reinstate without limitation, all annual reports for the previous 10 fiscal years must also be filed. (M.G.L. c.156D § 14.22)
Whether your name is still yours
Your original name is not guaranteed to still be yours. The corporation’s name must satisfy c.156D § 4.01 at reinstatement; if it no longer does (e.g., taken by another entity during dissolution), a certificate of amendment changing the name must be filed simultaneously with the reinstatement application. Check Massachusetts’s business-name database before assuming the reinstatement filing will go through under the old name. (M.G.L. c.156D § 14.22(3),(5))
What the filing costs
Massachusetts’s Application for Reinstatement Following Administrative Dissolution carries a $100 filing fee. $100 filing fee, per the official Application for Reinstatement form.
What this page does not answer
Reinstating the entity at the state level and squaring things up with the IRS are two separate processes. Late federal returns, penalty abatement requests, and reinstating a lapsed EIN’s associated accounts are governed by federal law, not by Massachusetts’s corporation statute, and this page does not source them. We have the state-filing answer at primary and the federal-cleanup answer not at all.
This page covers a for-profit business corporation. If you are reinstating an LLC in Massachusetts instead, the filing, fee and statute are different: see reinstating an LLC in Massachusetts.
Sources
Every citation on this page is statutory or the Secretary of State’s own official filing instructions. No formation service, no registered-agent marketing page and no aggregator is cited anywhere in this cluster as a source of law; those are the only publishers of the competing versions.
- M.G.L. c.156D 14.22 statute text: https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXXII/Chapter156D/Section14.22
- Official Application For Reinstatement Following Administrative Dissolution form: https://www.sec.state.ma.us/divisions/corporations/download/c156ds142295011347.pdf