Wyoming LLC Cost: What You Really Pay in Year One and Every Year After

Every formation site advertises a Wyoming LLC for somewhere between $0 and $199. Those numbers are usually real. They are also incomplete, because the state fee is the smallest part of what you will actually spend, and almost none of the advertised packages include the two filings a foreign-owned LLC has to make with the IRS every single year.

This is the full cost picture: what the state charges, what a registered agent charges, what is genuinely optional, and what the real recurring number looks like once you are operating. Figures below are the standard published fees at the time of writing; state fees change rarely, service pricing changes often.

What the State of Wyoming Charges

Wyoming keeps its fee schedule deliberately simple, which is part of why it became the default state for online businesses. There are exactly two mandatory state payments.

Formation: $100 to file the Articles of Organization by mail, $102 online (the extra $2 is a card convenience fee). This is a one-time payment and it is the entire cost of legally bringing the company into existence.

Annual Report License Tax: $60 minimum, due every year on the first day of the anniversary month of formation. The tax is calculated as $0.0002 per dollar of assets located in Wyoming. For a consulting, software or e-commerce business with no physical presence in the state, assets in Wyoming are effectively zero, so you pay the $60 floor. A company would need over $300,000 of assets physically in Wyoming before the calculation exceeded the minimum.

That is it. Wyoming charges no state corporate income tax, no personal income tax and no franchise tax on income. If you read about a "Wyoming tax return", it does not exist for a typical non-resident-owned service company.

Registered Agent: The One Fee You Cannot Skip

Wyoming law requires every LLC to maintain a registered agent with a physical street address in the state. This is not a mailbox service. It is the legal address where the state and the courts deliver documents, and if the agent lapses, the state administratively dissolves the company.

Market pricing runs roughly $50 to $200 per year. The cheap end is a bare-bones agent who scans whatever arrives. The higher end usually bundles mail forwarding, a business address you can use publicly, and compliance reminders. For a non-resident owner, the bundled version is usually worth the difference, because a missed annual report notice is far more expensive than the $80 you saved.

One practical warning: the "free registered agent for the first year" model is real, but check the renewal price before you sign up. Some providers renew at $299.

EIN: Free, But Not Always Fast

The IRS charges nothing for an Employer Identification Number. Anyone quoting you $150 for an EIN is charging for handling, not for the number itself.

The catch is timing. With an SSN or ITIN you can apply online and receive the EIN in minutes. Without one, you file Form SS-4 by fax or mail, and processing typically runs from a few days to several weeks depending on IRS backlogs. Since no bank will open an account without the EIN, that wait sits directly in front of your revenue. Paying a service to handle the fax filing and chase the IRS is a legitimate expense if the alternative is a month of guesswork. The full process is covered in our guide on how to get an EIN as a non-US resident.

Year One: The Realistic Total

A realistic all-in first year for a non-resident owner who does everything through a provider lands between $400 and $900. Done piecemeal by someone comfortable with IRS forms, it can be done for around $250. Anyone promising $99 all-in is either excluding the compliance filings or planning to sell them to you in April.

The Recurring Cost Nobody Advertises

The annual number matters more than the setup number, because you pay it for as long as the company exists.

Wyoming annual report: $60. Registered agent renewal: $50 to $200. So far, under $300.

Then comes the item that catches almost every new owner. A single-member LLC owned by a non-US person is treated as a disregarded entity that must file Form 5472 together with a pro-forma Form 1120 every year, even when the company earned nothing and even when it owes no US tax. The form reports transactions between the LLC and its foreign owner, including capital you put in and money you took out. The penalty for not filing is $25,000 per year, per form. It is not a percentage of tax owed, so a dormant company with zero revenue faces exactly the same penalty as a profitable one.

Preparation typically costs $150 to $600 depending on how many reportable transactions there are and who prepares it. Multi-member LLCs file Form 1065 with Schedules K-1 and K-2/K-3 instead, which is a more expensive return, usually $500 to $1,500. Our overview of LLC tax obligations goes through which return applies to which structure.

So the honest recurring figure for a single-member, foreign-owned Wyoming LLC is roughly $300 to $900 per year, not $60.

Costs That Are Optional (Even When Sold as Mandatory)

Operating Agreement

Wyoming does not require you to file one, and no state office will ever ask for it. Banks and payment processors will. A template is fine for a single-member company. Where a custom document earns its fee is when there are two or more members with unequal contributions, vesting, or an exit clause to define.

Certificate of Good Standing

Around $10 from the Secretary of State. You only need one when a bank, a foreign registry or a payment provider asks. If it needs an apostille for use abroad, budget another $50 to $150 including courier. Do not buy it upfront "just in case", because it expires in practical terms within a few months.

Anonymity Add-Ons

Wyoming already does not publish member or manager names in the public record. Paying extra for a "nominee" or "privacy package" on top of that rarely buys anything you did not already have. What Wyoming privacy actually covers, and what it does not, is explained in our article on the Wyoming LLC and why it became the default choice.

ITIN

An Individual Taxpayer Identification Number is only needed if you personally have a US filing obligation, typically because the LLC generates income effectively connected with a US trade or business, or you elected corporate treatment and are taking dividends. Most non-resident owners of service companies with no US presence never need one. Services sell it aggressively anyway, at $300 to $500.

What It Costs to Get It Wrong

The expensive scenarios are not formation choices, they are maintenance failures.

• Missed annual report: the company goes delinquent, then administratively dissolved. Reinstatement in Wyoming costs $60 plus the outstanding fees, and while dissolved the company technically cannot conduct business, which is awkward if a client asks for a good standing certificate.
• Missed Form 5472: $25,000. There is a reasonable-cause abatement route, but it is a written argument to the IRS, not a checkbox.
• Lost registered agent: service of process goes undelivered, and a default judgment can be entered without you knowing a case existed.
• Mixed personal and company funds: no direct fee, but it is the single most common way an owner hands a claimant the argument that the liability shield should be ignored.

Wyoming Compared to the Usual Alternatives

New Mexico is genuinely cheaper on paper. Wyoming wins for most people on the practical side: a well-run registry, a strong charging-order statute, and a name that banks and Stripe see thousands of times a week. Delaware makes sense when you expect institutional investors, and rarely before then. The state comparison is covered in more depth in our piece on the best states for LLC formation.

Where the Money Is Actually Well Spent

After several hundred formations, the pattern is consistent. Owners who overspend do it on privacy theatre and ITINs they do not need. Owners who underspend do it on bookkeeping, then pay an accountant three times the normal fee in April to reconstruct a year of Stripe payouts from bank statements.

Clean monthly bookkeeping is the highest-return line item in the whole budget. It turns tax season into a thirty-minute task, it makes the 5472 accurate, and it is the evidence that the company and the owner are genuinely separate.

If you are still deciding whether the structure fits at all, our page on how to open an LLC as a non-US resident walks through eligibility, timeline and what is included, and our formation packages show exactly which of the costs above are bundled and which are not.

Keep Reading

• the annual compliance checklist for a foreign-owned LLC
• how to close a US LLC the right way

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to form a Wyoming LLC? The state charges $100 to file. With a registered agent and first-year compliance filings, a realistic all-in first-year cost for a non-resident owner is $400 to $900.

What is the annual cost of a Wyoming LLC? $60 to the state, $50 to $200 for the registered agent, and $150 to $600 for the Form 5472 and pro-forma 1120 filing that foreign-owned single-member LLCs must submit. Budget $300 to $900 per year.

Do I pay Wyoming tax on my profits? No. Wyoming levies no corporate or personal income tax. Your tax exposure comes from the IRS if the income is US-connected, and from your country of residence.

Is there a fee if the company has no activity? Yes. A dormant LLC still owes the $60 annual report, still needs a registered agent, and still has to file Form 5472. Dormancy reduces almost nothing.

Can I be my own registered agent? Only with a physical street address in Wyoming where someone is available during business hours. A non-resident owner cannot satisfy that.

Is a cheaper state a better idea? Only if the savings survive contact with reality. Saving $60 a year in New Mexico is irrelevant if a payment processor or bank slows you down for a week.

The Short Version

Wyoming is cheap to enter and cheap to keep, but the state fee was never the real number. Plan for roughly $500 in year one and $400 to $700 a year afterwards including proper filings, and treat anything advertised below that as a partial quote. The companies that get into trouble are almost never the ones that spent too much at formation.

Want the numbers checked against your specific situation before you file? Book a free Google Meet and we will go through the actual line items for your business.