State annual reports: five dates you can calendar, and the rest you must look up.

Best for: Anyone with one or two registrations

Every state answers the two questions that matter — what's due and when — from its own portal: Delaware's corp.delaware.gov, Florida's Sunbiz, Texas's Comptroller, California's bizfileOnline. Look up each entity, note the date logic, calendar it with lead time, and save the filing confirmation. For a single-state business this is fifteen minutes a year.

Main limitation: The portals tell you nothing proactively — mailed notices go to stale addresses, and anniversary-based dates mean your calendar, not the state's, is the system of record.

Best for: Multi-state registrations that want managed reminders

Registered agent providers commonly sell compliance monitoring on top of the agent service — tracking your report dates across states and filing on your behalf. If you're foreign-qualified in several states, consolidating the calendar with the party already receiving service of process is a reasonable shape.

Main limitation: The agent service alone does not include compliance filing — that's a separate product, and assuming otherwise is a classic way to miss a deadline. Confirm in writing which filings the service actually covers.

Best for: Owners who want the obligation calendar computed from their actual facts

deciqAI builds the obligation calendar from what your entity actually is — a Delaware corporation gets March 1, a Delaware LLC gets the June 1 tax, a Florida registration gets May 1, a Texas entity gets May 15 — each with its statutory citation and the cost of missing it, alongside the federal deadlines on the same calendar. Where a date genuinely can't be asserted from public rules (California's anniversary month, most other states), it flags the item as needing confirmation against the SoS record instead of guessing — a wrong date presented confidently is worse than a flagged unknown. Disclosure: this is our product — we're not neutral, weigh accordingly.

Main limitation: It computes and flags; it doesn't file. The filings themselves happen on the state portals or through your registered agent, and confirmed dates for anniversary-based states still come from the SoS record.

When are state annual reports due?

There is no national date. Fixed-date examples: Delaware corporations March 1, Florida May 1, Texas franchise reports May 15, Delaware LLCs' $300 tax June 1. Anniversary-based examples: California's Statement of Information is due by the end of your registration anniversary month, and many other states work the same way. The only reliable method is looking up each registration on that state's Secretary of State site.

What happens if I miss a state annual report?

A penalty first, dissolution eventually. Examples with statutes: Delaware corporations pay $200 plus 1.5% monthly interest (8 Del. C. §502); Florida charges a flat $400 late fee with no waiver and administratively dissolves entities by late September; California's missed Statement of Information costs $250 and can end in SoS suspension — which voids contracts signed while suspended. Administrative dissolution is the common endpoint across states, and reinstatement is always more expensive than filing was.

Is the annual report the same as my state tax return?

No, and the confusion causes real misses. The annual report is a Secretary of State filing about the entity — agent, addresses, officers. The franchise or income tax return goes to the revenue agency. California is the sharpest example: the FTB returns (568, 100S) and the SoS Statement of Information are independent obligations, and filing one does not discharge the other. Texas inverts it — there the May 15 franchise report to the Comptroller is the main event. New York's CT-3 is likewise a tax return, on the tax calendar.

Do I file in my formation state, the states where I operate, or both?

Both. Formation state obligations (like Delaware's) follow the charter wherever you operate, and each state where you're foreign-qualified imposes its own periodic report on its own date. A Delaware corporation doing business in California typically carries at least the Delaware March 1 filing, the California Statement of Information, and both states' tax filings — four calendars for one company.

What about the FinCEN BOI report?

As of FinCEN's March 2025 interim final rule, US-domestic companies and their beneficial owners are exempt from BOI reporting — only foreign companies registered to do business in the US report. But this rule's scope and deadlines have changed repeatedly since 2024 and litigation reshaped it more than once, so verify current FinCEN guidance before acting either way. A confidently stale answer here is worse than checking.

Does my registered agent handle the annual report automatically?

Not unless you bought that specifically. The registered agent service is receiving legal documents at a street address; compliance filing is a separate product many of the same companies sell. The gap between the two is one of the most common ways multi-state businesses miss reports — confirm in writing which filings, if any, your provider files for you.