How to File a Kentucky Annual Report by June 30

Kentucky annual report filing is done through the Secretary of State between January 1 and June 30 each year, costs $15, and applies to every formal business entity registered in the state except sole proprietorships.¹ The report confirms your company’s name, address, registered agent, and key people so state records stay current. Miss the deadline and your entity loses good standing the next day, with administrative dissolution or revocation of authority following soon after.

Who Has to File

The filing requirement covers domestic and foreign corporations (both for-profit and nonprofit), LLCs, limited partnerships, limited liability partnerships, and business trusts.² Sole proprietorships are the common exception. They don’t file an annual report with the Secretary of State at all.

A dormant year doesn’t excuse you. If your entity earned no revenue and did no business during the prior calendar year, you still owe the report and the $15 fee. The only way to end the annual cycle is to formally dissolve or withdraw the entity.

Newly formed entities get one break. If your business was organized or registered in Kentucky during the current calendar year, your first annual report isn’t due until the following year. An LLC organized in March 2026, for example, files its first report between January 1 and June 30 of 2027.³

The Filing Window

The window opens January 1 and closes June 30.³ A report filed in January carries the same weight as one filed in June. There’s no early-filer benefit, but waiting until the last few days of the month puts you at the mercy of a website hiccup or a payment processing delay right when the office is busiest. Aim to be done well before June 30.

What to Have Ready Before You Start

Gathering the information ahead of time keeps you from stalling halfway through the form:

Your organization number, the unique identifier the Secretary of State assigned when the entity was formed or registered. You can look it up through the Secretary of State’s online search tool.
The principal office address. A physical address is required; a P.O. Box alone won’t work.
The name and Kentucky street address of your registered agent, the person or company designated to receive legal documents for the entity.⁴
Officer or manager information. Corporations list the names and addresses of the current president, secretary, and treasurer. LLCs list managers (if manager-managed) or members (if member-managed).

One important sequencing point: if your registered agent has changed, file that change with the Secretary of State separately before you submit the annual report. The annual report can update your principal office address and officer information, but a registered agent change is its own filing.

Filing Online

Online filing is the fastest route. The system processes the report immediately and issues a confirmation number as soon as payment clears.²

Search for your entity on the Secretary of State’s online services portal using your organization number or business name, then select the annual report filing option for the current year. The form pre-populates some fields from your most recent filing. Read every field carefully anyway, because pre-populated data can be outdated if other filings changed something during the year. Update anything that has changed, review the summary screen, and pay the $15 fee.¹ Corrections after submission require a separate amendment filing, so catch mistakes at the review screen.

Filing by Mail

You can also print the annual report form and mail it with a $15 check to:

Office of the Secretary of State
Business Filings
P.O. Box 718
Frankfort, KY 40602

The report must be signed and dated. Paper filings take longer to process, and there’s no instant confirmation. The report has to be accepted by the deadline, not merely postmarked by it, so if you’re mailing close to June 30, allow real time for delivery and processing.¹

What Happens If You Miss the Deadline

Missing June 30 puts your entity into bad standing immediately.² From there, the consequences depend on whether the entity is domestic or foreign.

Domestic entities, meaning businesses organized under Kentucky law, are administratively dissolved by the Secretary of State. A dissolved entity can’t legally conduct business, enter into enforceable contracts, or maintain lawsuits in Kentucky courts, and pending litigation involving the entity can be jeopardized.¹

For foreign entities, meaning businesses organized elsewhere but registered to do business in Kentucky, the penalty is revocation of the certificate of authority to transact business in the state.¹ The practical effect is the same. The entity loses its legal ability to operate here.

Bad standing also shows up in public records. Banks, lenders, potential partners, and government agencies routinely check entity status, and a dissolved or revoked entity will have trouble opening accounts, closing deals, or obtaining permits until the record is cleaned up.

Reinstating a Dissolved or Revoked Entity

Administrative dissolution isn’t permanent. Kentucky allows reinstatement at any time after the dissolution date, provided the entity hasn’t already begun winding down its affairs.⁵ The process is done by mail and takes more steps than a routine annual report.

The reinstatement packet includes:

A reinstatement application confirming the entity’s name, the date of dissolution, and a statement that the grounds for dissolution have been corrected.
A reinstatement annual report covering the current year.
A tax clearance letter from the Kentucky Department of Revenue confirming all state taxes owed by the entity have been paid. The Secretary of State’s office can request this on your behalf.⁶
For for-profit corporations only, a clearance letter from the Division of Unemployment Insurance confirming all employer contributions, penalties, and assessments are paid.⁵
An address change form, if the principal or registered office has changed since the last filing.

The reinstatement penalty is $100, on top of the $15 filing fee for each delinquent annual report.⁷ An entity three years behind, for example, would owe $100 plus $45 in back reports plus the current year’s $15, for $160 in state fees, before any back taxes or unemployment insurance amounts the clearance process turns up.

Once approved, reinstatement relates back to the date of dissolution as though the dissolution never happened, so the entity’s legal existence is treated as continuous. That matters for contracts and obligations entered into during the gap.⁵

Related Tax Obligations

Filing the annual report keeps your entity in good standing with the Secretary of State, but it does not cover your tax obligations. Kentucky imposes a Limited Liability Entity Tax (LLET) on most pass-through entities and corporations, including LLCs, S-corporations, and limited partnerships. The minimum LLET is $175 for businesses with $3 million or less in gross receipts or gross profits.⁸ The LLET is filed with the Kentucky Department of Revenue, not the Secretary of State, and is separate from any income tax the entity owes.

Unpaid taxes don’t directly trigger dissolution, but they matter if your entity ever needs to be reinstated: the required tax clearance from the Department of Revenue won’t issue while balances are outstanding. Sales tax registration, unemployment insurance, and withholding tax are separate obligations for businesses that meet the relevant thresholds or have employees, and the Kentucky Business One Stop portal consolidates access to many of them.²

1
Kentucky Secretary of State. Annual Reports
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Kentucky Business One Stop. Annual Reporting
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Justia Law. Kentucky Code 14A.6-010 – Annual Report
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Kentucky Secretary of State. Business Filings and Records Online Services
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Kentucky Legislative Research Commission. Kentucky Code 14A.7-030 – Reinstatement Following Administrative Dissolution
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Kentucky Secretary of State. FAQs – Business Filings Information
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Kentucky Secretary of State. Fees
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Kentucky Department of Revenue. Corporation Income and Limited Liability Entity Tax