Reinstatement
The state dissolved your company while you were gone. It is usually fixable.
What it actually is
When a company misses required filings — usually annual reports, sometimes franchise taxes — the state administratively dissolves it. The entity stops being in good standing and can lose the exclusive right to its name. Reinstatement is the process of bringing it back, typically by filing everything you missed, paying the back fees and penalties, and submitting a reinstatement application.
Do you need it?
Only if it already happened. Check your status on your Secretary of State's business search before you assume it did or did not — it is free and takes about a minute.
What changes if you’re in uniform
This is the single most predictable way a service member loses a company, and it almost never involves doing anything wrong. You deploy. The annual report notice goes to an address you no longer check, or to a registered agent who is you, at a place you have not lived since the last PCS. You come back nine months later to a dissolved entity and a name somebody else can now take. Two defenses, both boring and both effective: use a commercial registered agent so notices go somewhere staffed, and put your annual report deadline in the same place you keep the rest of your critical dates.
Doing it yourself
You file with
Your state's Secretary of State
- Look up your entity on the state business search to confirm the status and the reason.
- File every delinquent annual report and pay the associated back fees and penalties.
- Submit the reinstatement application; some states also require a tax clearance certificate.
Cost: Back filings, penalties, and a reinstatement fee — all set by the state and all varying by state. There is usually a window after which reinstatement is no longer available and you must form a new entity, so check your state's deadline before anything else.
Our call
Prevention is free and the cure is not. If you are reading this before it happens, go set up a commercial registered agent instead.
If you’d rather pay someone
Bizee lists reinstatement at $199 as of 11 August 2026. You still pay any state fee on top of that.
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