Wyoming vs New Mexico LLC: The Low-Cost Showdown

Wyoming vs New Mexico LLC for non-residents: $100 vs $50 to file, annual report vs none, privacy, and which one banks and processors treat better.

New Mexico is cheaper. Wyoming is smoother. New Mexico charges $50 to form an LLC and requires no annual report at all, which makes it the lowest-maintenance US LLC you can own. Wyoming charges $100 to form and $60 a year, and in exchange you get a state that banks, payment processors, and US counterparties recognize instantly.

If your only criterion is the smallest lifetime cost, form in New Mexico. If you want the cheap option that never makes anyone at a bank pause, form in Wyoming. That $60 a year is the price of being boring, and boring is worth something.

Bottom line:

New Mexico: $50 filing fee, no recurring state report, no recurring state fee.
Wyoming: $100 filing fee, $60 minimum annual report license tax due in your anniversary month.
Both keep members off the public filing. Neither changes your federal tax obligations.

Wyoming vs New Mexico LLC comparison

	Wyoming	New Mexico
Formation filing fee	$100	$50
Recurring state cost	$60 minimum annual report license tax	None for LLCs
Annual report	Yes, due first day of anniversary month	No LLC report required
Members named publicly	No	No
Registered agent required	Yes, in-state street address	Yes, in-state street address
Standout feature	Recognition and a mature LLC statute	Genuinely zero ongoing state paperwork
Weakest point	$60 a year and a deadline to remember	Less familiar to some banks and processors

The cost difference over ten years

This is the whole argument, so let us put numbers on it.

New Mexico: $50 once. There is no annual or biennial report obligation for a New Mexico LLC — the state’s periodic report requirement applies to corporations. Ten years of a New Mexico LLC costs $50 in state fees.

Wyoming: $100 to file, then the annual report license tax of $60 or two-tenths of one mill ($0.0002) per dollar of assets located and employed in Wyoming, whichever is greater. A non-resident service or software business holds no Wyoming assets, so you pay the $60 floor. Ten years costs $700.

So the state-fee gap over a decade is $650. Meanwhile your registered agent will cost roughly $1,250 over the same period at flat national pricing. The agent, not the state, is your real recurring cost in either jurisdiction — which is why paying once and forgetting it matters less than most comparisons imply.

Northwest Registered Agent charges a flat $125 a year in either state and does not raise the price at renewal, which keeps the comparison clean. Check the current pricing page before buying.

The deadline you do not have in New Mexico

New Mexico’s real advantage is not the $50. It is that there is no date to miss.

A Wyoming LLC that skips its annual report gets administratively dissolved sixty days after the due date. That is quiet — no court, no drama, and you may not notice until a bank asks for a certificate of good standing. Reinstating a Wyoming LLC that lost its registered agent costs $350, three and a half times the original filing fee.

A New Mexico LLC has no such trigger at the state level. Your only ongoing state obligation is keeping a registered agent on file. Fewer moving parts means fewer ways to lose the company by accident, which is a real benefit if you are running the business alone across time zones.

That is also the honest counterargument to Wyoming: the $60 is trivial, but the diary entry is not, and administrative dissolution for a $60 oversight is a bad trade.

Privacy: a tie on paper, a small edge to New Mexico

Neither state requires LLC members or managers to be named in the formation document. Both list the registered agent, and that is the address the public sees.

New Mexico’s edge is downstream. Because there is no annual report, there is no recurring filing where you attest to anything or add a signature to the public record. A Wyoming LLC files something every year; a New Mexico LLC files nothing after formation. If your goal is the smallest possible public paper trail, New Mexico is structurally quieter.

Do not oversell this to yourself. Your bank, your payment processor, and the IRS will all know exactly who owns the company regardless of what the state publishes. State-level privacy stops casual public searches, not KYC and not a subpoena. On the federal side, FinCEN’s beneficial ownership reporting no longer applies to companies formed in the United States, so neither a Wyoming nor a New Mexico LLC is a BOI reporting company — confirm current status at fincen.gov/boi.

Where Wyoming quietly wins

Recognition. Wyoming passed the first US LLC statute and has decades of case law and administrative practice behind it. Registered agents, banks, formation services, and accountants all handle Wyoming LLCs constantly.

New Mexico LLCs are less common, and the same feature that founders like — no ongoing disclosure — occasionally makes a compliance officer look twice. That does not mean a New Mexico LLC gets rejected; it means you may be asked for one more document. If you are already fighting through non-resident onboarding at a bank or processor, adding an unusual state is a small extra headwind you do not need.

Wyoming also has a more developed set of supporting statutes: charging-order protection, series LLCs at $10 per series, and clear reinstatement paths. Most solo founders never touch any of it, but if your LLC will hold assets rather than run an operating business, Wyoming is the better-mapped territory.

What neither state changes

Three things are identical in Wyoming and New Mexico, and they are the things that actually govern your year.

You still need a registered agent. Physical street address in the state of formation, no PO boxes, and you cannot serve as your own from abroad.

You still need an EIN. With no SSN or ITIN you cannot use the IRS online tool. You file Form SS-4 and enter “foreign” on line 7b, then fax it to 855-215-1627 from inside the US or 304-707-9471 from outside — the IRS says a fax reply generally comes within four business days. Mail to the EIN International Operation in Cincinnati takes about four weeks. Details in how to get an EIN without an SSN.

You still file Form 5472. A US LLC wholly owned by a foreign person must file Form 5472 with a pro forma Form 1120 by the Form 1120 due date including extensions, and it cannot be filed electronically. The penalty for missing it is $25,000, with a further $25,000 if the failure continues more than 90 days after IRS notice. A dormant LLC still files. No state choice affects this.

And neither state exempts you from the state where you actually operate. If you have staff, an office, or inventory you control in another US state, expect to register there as a foreign LLC and pay its fees too.

Who should pick New Mexico

Pick New Mexico if you are running a lean one-person business — freelancing, consulting, a small SaaS, an information product — and you want the lowest possible lifetime cost with nothing to remember. Pick it if you value a minimal public record. Pick it if the LLC is a side vehicle you do not want to babysit.

The lean New Mexico setup: $50 to the state, Northwest Registered Agent at $125 a year, EIN by fax yourself. Under $200 for year one and $125 a year after.

Who should pick Wyoming

Pick Wyoming if banking and payment processing are the parts of this project you are most worried about, and you want the path of least resistance. Pick it if the LLC will hold assets or IP. Pick it if you expect to deal with US counterparties who will look up the entity. Pick it if $60 a year is noise to you and familiarity is worth more.

If Delaware is also on your list, the comparison is different — that decision turns on investor perception, not cost. See Wyoming vs Delaware.

Does New Mexico really have no annual report for LLCs?

That is correct: New Mexico’s periodic report requirement covers corporations, not LLCs. Your only continuing state obligation is maintaining a registered agent. Confirm on the New Mexico Secretary of State site before you rely on it.

Will a New Mexico LLC be rejected by banks or Stripe?

We have seen no rule against it, and New Mexico LLCs get approved routinely. The state is simply less common than Wyoming or Delaware, so expect the possibility of one extra verification step rather than a rejection.

Is New Mexico’s gross receipts tax a problem?

Only if you actually do business in New Mexico. The gross receipts tax applies to sales and services delivered in the state. A non-resident-owned LLC with no New Mexico customers or presence is outside it — but confirm your facts with a CPA, since “doing business in New Mexico” is a factual test, not a formality.

Can I switch states later?

Yes, through domestication or by forming a new entity and merging. It costs filing fees and time, and you will re-paper banking. Choose once, deliberately, rather than planning to move.

The call

New Mexico for the absolute cheapest LLC you can legally keep alive. Wyoming for $60 a year less friction everywhere else. Both are legitimate, both are private at the state level, and neither is a shortcut around federal filings.

If you want to file it yourself, Northwest Registered Agent is the flat-rate agent that works identically in both states. If you would rather hand off the filing, the EIN, the US address, and the annual paperwork, doola covers the whole stack starting around $297 a year plus the state fee — verify current pricing on their page. Full process: US LLC for non-residents.

This is general information, not tax or legal advice. Confirm your own obligations with a CPA or attorney.