How to Reinstate an LLC in Arizona: Six Years to Come Back, Six Months to Keep Your Name

Updated August 24, 2026. Quick answer: Two things about Arizona catch people out before they read a single statute. First, business entities are filed with the Arizona Corporation Commission, not the Secretary of State, so half the searches people run lead nowhere. Second, and more expensive: Arizona gives you six years to reinstate an administratively dissolved LLC, the most generous window in this series, but it releases your name to anyone after six months. The fee is $100 plus everything that was due and everything that would have come due while you were dissolved. And if you dissolved the company yourself, none of this applies: the Commission says voluntary termination is permanent.

It is the Corporation Commission, and that is not a technicality

In forty-nine other jurisdictions the business register sits with the Secretary of State or an equivalent department. Arizona puts it under the Corporation Commission, the same body that regulates utilities, and the statute names the Commission as the actor at every step. Searching for “Arizona Secretary of State LLC reinstatement” produces confident answers about the wrong office, and the eCorp portal you actually need is the Commission’s.

How you got dissolved: notice, then sixty days

“If a limited liability company, not later than sixty days after delivery of the notice under subsection B of this section, does not cure or demonstrate to the satisfaction of the commission the nonexistence of each ground determined by the commission, the commission shall administratively dissolve the company by issuing a statement of administrative dissolution that recites the grounds for dissolution and the effective date of dissolution.”

A.R.S. § 29-3708(C)

The statement recites the effective date. Every clock on this page runs from that date, including the six-month one that costs you the name.

Six years to reinstate

“A limited liability company that is administratively dissolved under section 29-3708 may apply to the commission for reinstatement not later than six years after the effective date of dissolution.”

A.R.S. § 29-3709(A)

Six years is the longest hard window in this series: longer than Virginia’s five, Louisiana’s three and Ohio’s two. It is a real deadline rather than a formality, but for most owners it is not the binding one.

Six months is the deadline that actually binds

“If the limited liability company has not applied for reinstatement within six months after the effective date of the administrative dissolution, the commission shall release the company’s name for use in accordance with this chapter or by a person intending to register the name as a trademark pursuant to section 44-1460.”

A.R.S. § 29-3709(B)

Read the verb: the Commission shall release the name. This is not passive expiry of a reservation; it is an affirmative act by the state at the six-month mark, and it puts the name in reach of anyone who wants it, including someone registering it as a trademark.

So Arizona’s twelve-to-one ratio is the widest in this series: seventy-two months to save the entity, six to save the name. An owner who reads “six years” and relaxes has almost certainly misidentified their own deadline. If the name has gone by the time you apply, articles of amendment adopting a new one have to be delivered together with the reinstatement application.

$100, plus the years you were gone

“To be reinstated, a limited liability company must pay all fees and penalties that were due to the commission at the time of the company’s administrative dissolution and all fees and penalties that would have been due to the commission while the company was administratively dissolved.”

A.R.S. § 29-3709(E)

Both halves matter: what you owed when you were dissolved, and what you would have owed had you stayed alive. On top of that sits the Commission’s own current charge:

“Please note that there is a reinstatement fee of $100.00, which is in addition to any filings or fees that may be past due.”

Arizona Corporation Commission, Business Services FAQs

If you terminated it yourself, there is no way back

Section 29-3709 is written only for companies the Commission dissolved. A company that filed its own articles of termination is in a different category, and the Commission answers the question in six words:

“No. LLCs that are terminated voluntarily are permanently terminated.”

Arizona Corporation Commission, Business Services FAQs

This is the distinction that decides which page you need. “My LLC is dissolved” may be curable for six years. “I dissolved my LLC” is not curable at all in Arizona, and the only route is forming a new company. If the second one describes you, the thing to read is what dissolving an Arizona LLC actually does.

Reinstatement erases the gap

“The reinstatement relates back to and takes effect as of the effective date of the administrative dissolution.”

A.R.S. § 29-3709(G)(1)

The paragraph after it preserves the rights of anyone who relied on the dissolution before they knew or had notice of the reinstatement, the standard carve-out, and one more reason speed is worth more than the $100.

What this page does not do

• The $100 is from the Commission’s FAQ, not a fee schedule. The Commission’s schedule-of-LLC-fees PDF was not retrieved this session, so the figure comes from an official agency page that is a FAQ rather than a formal price list.
• The statute does not price the back fees, and neither does this page; what you owe under § 29-3709(E) depends on how long you were dissolved and what was outstanding when it happened.
• One dissolution ground was not traced. §§ 29-3707 to 29-3710 were read in full; the interrogatories process cross-referenced in § 29-3708(A)(6) was confirmed to exist but not read.
• It is not legal advice.

Related: what an Arizona LLC costs to keep, how to dissolve an Arizona LLC on purpose, and what happens when you stop filing annual reports. The other states that hold your name for a fixed period: Ohio (one year) and Louisiana (three). Also in this series: Washington and Colorado.

Sources

Every statement of law on this page is quoted from the text below, as read on August 24, 2026. Each row links the document it was read from.

General consumer information, not financial, tax or legal advice. State rules are as published by the cited source on 2026-08-24 and change; your own facts govern, and a reinstatement question with money on it is one to put to a lawyer or accountant in that state.