Register your out-of-state entity in Colorado

Colorado's statute says a foreign entity may not transact business or conduct activities in the state until its statement is on file. It also names 12 kinds of activity that do not count, including defending a lawsuit, holding internal meetings, having a Colorado bank account and finishing one deal inside 30 days (C.R.S. 7-90-801(2)(a) to (l)). The page on when an entity needs Colorado authority sets the list beside real situations such as a remote employee, stock in a warehouse or online orders. Which side of that list your activity falls on depends on your facts, and a Colorado business lawyer can tell you.

Registration is a one-time filing. What follows is yearly: a periodic report at $25, filed online in a window around your report month. Miss it and the record turns noncompliant, then delinquent after 60 days without the right form, and a delinquent name is held for 400 days. A late report adds a $50 penalty. The periodic report page lays out the calendar.

When the work here is over, the entity files the Statement of Foreign Entity Withdrawal to close its record. That filing costs $10 and comes with no final periodic report. An entity that later returns can requalify its old record or file a fresh statement.

Colorado files every entity type on one statement. The same statement, at the same fee, serves a limited liability company, a corporation, a nonprofit corporation, a limited partnership and a limited liability partnership. The entity type is a drop-down in Section 2, not a separate document. For you that means the order is the same whichever kind of entity you hold, and it means that a business with several entities in different forms can file the same way for each.

Two exceptions are worth knowing. The statute leaves out foreign general partnerships that are not LLPs, and it leaves out foreign unincorporated nonprofit associations. A sole proprietorship is not a form of entity in Colorado at all.

• The entity's name exactly as the home state spells it, with its ending.
• What kind of entity it is, and the jurisdiction that formed it.
• Where the entity is run from, as a street address, and a mailing address only if mail goes elsewhere.
• Your agent, either a person who holds a Colorado ID or a company whose Colorado record is in good standing.
• The date business in Colorado began or will begin.
• The name and mailing address of the person causing the filing to be delivered.

That is the whole list.

$199 plus the state fee, including your first year of registered agent service; after that the agent service renews at $149 a year.