Can I move my LLC to another state?
Asked about 500 times a month on Google, across more than forty phrasings: move, transfer, change the state of an LLC. It comes up when an owner relocates, or realises the LLC was formed somewhere the business no longer has anything to do with.
The usual trigger is a move. The owner now lives and works in a new state while the LLC still sits in the old one, paying that state's fees and filing its reports, and the question is whether the company can simply come along.
It also comes from owners who formed in a state for its reputation, then found they were registering, paying and filing in their home state anyway.
Asked about 500 times a month on Google, across more than forty phrasings.
@GaboG4·
Often yes, without closing the company, but only if both states allow it. The filing is usually called a conversion, and some states call it a domestication or a transfer. The LLC keeps existing; it just becomes an LLC of the new state.
Delaware and Florida both allow it in both directions. Delaware lets a foreign LLC convert into a Delaware LLC and lets a Delaware LLC convert into a foreign LLC. Florida lets a Florida LLC become an LLC of another state, and lets another state's LLC become a Florida LLC, in each case if the other state's law authorizes the conversion. That condition is the catch: the old state has to let the company leave and the new state has to let it arrive.
If either state does not allow it, there are two other routes. Form a new LLC in the new state, move the business into it, and dissolve the old one. Or keep the original LLC and register it in the new state as a foreign LLC, which means two states' fees and reports every year.
Whichever route you take, check your operating agreement first: Delaware's statute says a conversion is approved the way the agreement specifies, and only falls back to a default when the agreement is silent.
