All 50 states › Louisiana
Louisiana's annual report looks forgiving from a distance: the Secretary of State won't revoke your articles of organization until you've missed three consecutive years of reports (La. R.S. 12:1308.2 — and note the statute says shall revoke, not may). That slow kill clock lulls people. What it hides is the sharpest front edge of any anniversary state: the report is due on or before your anniversary date — the day the state approved your articles — with no grace period at all. The day after, your LLC is "not in good standing," and in Louisiana that label is not cosmetic: subsection (E) of the same statute prohibits a delinquent LLC from doing business with the state or any of its boards, agencies, departments, or commissions — and lets them declare an existing contract null and void. Contractors, healthcare providers, anyone selling to a parish school board or bidding public work: a $35 filing you forgot can unwind a contract you already won. The filing itself is trivial — $35 online through geauxBIZ (processed in about 15 minutes) or $30 by mail, filable up to 30 days early. The state even stopped mailing postcard reminders back in 2016; unless you've subscribed to its email/text alerts, the anniversary date lives in your head or nowhere.
| Item | Louisiana LLC |
|---|---|
| What's due | Annual Report with the Secretary of State (La. R.S. 12:1308.1) |
| Deadline | On or before your anniversary date — the date your articles were approved — every year; filable up to 30 days early |
| Fee | $35 online via geauxBIZ (card) · $30 by mail (check to "Secretary of State") |
| Day after the deadline | Not in good standing — immediately; no grace period. Statutory bar on commercial business with the state; existing state contracts voidable (§ 1308.2(E)) |
| Three consecutive missed years | The Secretary of State shall revoke your articles of organization, after 30 days' written notice mailed to your registered agent (or registered office if no agent of record) |
| Reinstatement | Within 3 years of revocation: application signed by a member/manager + current annual report + the R.S. 12:1364 fee. Reinstatement is retroactive — as if the revocation never happened |
| Your name | Protected from other filers for only 3 years after revocation; after that, anyone can take it, and reviving the company means amending to a new name |
| Where | geauxBIZ (online) · Commercial search (check status + anniversary date) · SOS Commercial Division: 225-925-4704 |
Which date is yours? The anniversary of the day your articles were approved — not when you opened the bank account or got your EIN. Look it up on the state's commercial search ("Registration Date" on your entity's detail page), and while you're there, click Subscribe to Electronic Notification — that's the state's only reminder channel, roughly 30 days before your due date, and it's opt-in.
Most states ramp: late fee, delinquency window, then dissolution. Louisiana skips the ramp in both directions. There's no late fee at all — nothing to invoice you into remembering — and no formal grace period either; you go straight from compliant to not-in-good-standing, and then nothing else happens for up to three years. That silence is the mechanism. An owner who missed year one gets no bill, often no consequence they can see, and reasonably concludes it didn't matter. Year two, same. Year three, the statute's "shall" kicks in and the 30-day notice goes out — by mail, to the registered agent on file, which for a three-years-dormant company is very often a stale address. (No agent on record? The notice goes to the registered office — possibly an apartment you left in 2023.) The revocations that stick are rarely defiance; they're owners who never saw a single warning. The repair path is genuinely generous if you catch it: reinstatement within three years is retroactive, restoring the company as though nothing happened — compare Utah, where the same mistake becomes unrecoverable after two years on a 60-day fuse. But the three-year clocks are twins: reinstatement rights and name protection both expire at year three. Catch it at year 3½ and the LLC is gone and the name may be too. If you're currently staring at a "not in good standing" or revoked status, the triage sequence is in what to do if you missed your annual report.
| Where you are | What it costs |
|---|---|
| On time (by anniversary date) | $35 online / $30 mail |
| 1 day – 3 years late | No late fee — but not in good standing: barred from state business, contracts voidable, lenders and title companies will flag it |
| 3 consecutive missed reports | Revocation of articles (mandatory), after 30-day mailed notice to your agent |
| Within 3 years of revocation | Reinstatement: application + current report + R.S. 12:1364 fee — retroactive, name intact if reclaimed in time |
| 3+ years after revocation | No reinstatement path; name released to the public; start over with new articles |
Among anniversary states, Louisiana is the strictest at the deadline and the softest after it. Utah is the mirror image: a real grace period up front, then a 60-day slide into an "Expired" status with a two-year hard stop. Wyoming starts its 60-day dissolution clock only after notice. Colorado lets a delinquent LLC linger roughly 400 days with its name at risk at the end. And Louisiana's distinctive edge — the immediate state-contract bar — has no real analogue in the other anniversary states; it makes good standing an operational requirement rather than a housekeeping preference for anyone whose customers include the government. One more Louisiana quirk worth knowing: it's the rare state where filing by mail is cheaper than filing online ($30 vs $35), though the online filing processes in minutes while paper takes days. Owners juggling a Louisiana anniversary date against fixed-date states can see both rhythms side by side in the 50-state table.
A deadline with no reminder, no late fee, and no grace — just consequences. EntityMinder pins your Louisiana anniversary date next to every other state's deadline and reminds you before the date, not after your good standing is gone. The beta waitlist is open; planned pricing is $9/month.
Try EntityMinder free →