Delaware Franchise Tax Late Fee Estimator (free 2026 tool)

What this tool does

Calculates the $200 late penalty plus 1.5% monthly interest on unpaid Delaware franchise tax. Shows total owed with months delinquent.

Who needs it

Delaware LLC owners who missed the June 1 deadline.

How it works

1. Enter LLC formation date and current date.
2. Tool calculates months delinquent and total owed.
3. Shows path to remediation.

Inputs

• LLC formation date
• Current date
• Years missed

Output

Total owed including penalty and interest.

What does the Delaware Franchise Tax Late Fee Estimator actually calculate?

This tool answers one narrow question: if you missed the June 1 deadline for the Delaware LLC franchise tax, how much do you owe today? It starts from the flat $300 annual franchise tax that every Delaware LLC pays, then layers on the two charges the state adds when payment is late. The first is a fixed $200 late penalty. The second is interest of 1.5% per month on the unpaid balance, applied for each month the payment is delinquent. The estimator combines those three pieces and shows a single total owed, along with how many months you are behind. That total is what matters when you are deciding whether to pay immediately or wait, because the interest portion keeps growing the longer the balance sits.

For a non-US founder, this calculation is rarely obvious. The $300 tax is not based on revenue, profit, or whether the LLC ever opened a bank account, so founders who treated the company as dormant are often surprised that anything is due at all. The estimator makes the math concrete so you are not guessing. It is built for the LLC franchise tax specifically, which is a flat amount, and not for the Delaware corporation calculation, which uses share counts or an assumed-par-value method and produces very different numbers. If you formed a corporation rather than an LLC, the inputs and the result here will not match what the state bills you, so confirm your entity type before you rely on the figure.

Why does the June 1 deadline matter so much for a Delaware LLC?

Delaware sets a single annual due date for the LLC franchise tax: June 1 of each year, covering the prior calendar year. There is no graduated schedule and no quarterly installment for the LLC tax. You either pay the $300 on or before June 1, or you are late and the $200 penalty attaches. That binary structure is why a one-day miss costs the same fixed penalty as a one-month miss on the penalty line, while the interest line is what separates a short delay from a long one. The estimator reflects this by treating the penalty as a flat add-on and the interest as a per-month accrual.

Many non-resident owners miss the date because the state does not mail a paper reminder to a foreign address, and the registered agent notice may land in an inbox the founder does not check. There is also a common timing confusion: the tax for a given year is due the following June 1, so a company formed in, say, October still owes its first $300 by the next June 1 even though it existed for only part of the year. The tax is not prorated for a short first year. When you enter your formation date and the current date into the tool, it uses those to work out how many annual cycles you have passed and how many months of interest have accumulated, which is why both dates change the output.

How do you read the formation date input?

The formation date is the day your Delaware LLC was officially created, which is the date the Certificate of Formation was accepted by the Division of Corporations. That filing costs $110 at formation, and the acceptance date is what anchors every annual franchise tax deadline that follows. The estimator uses your formation date to determine which June 1 deadlines you have lived through, because each completed annual cycle can carry its own $300 tax, $200 penalty, and accruing interest. Entering the wrong date, such as the day you decided to form rather than the day the state stamped the certificate, will shift the count of delinquent years and distort the total.

If you are unsure of the exact acceptance date, check the stamped Certificate of Formation or the confirmation your formation provider sent. The estimator does not need the time of day or the filing reference, only the calendar date. Be careful with the year: a company formed in late one year and a company formed early the next year may have a different number of past June 1 deadlines even if they feel similar in age. The tool is sensitive to that boundary, so the most reliable practice is to copy the date directly from the certificate rather than from memory.

How do you read the current date and years-missed inputs?

The current date is the day you intend to pay, or the day you want the estimate to reflect. Because interest accrues at 1.5% per month, the gap between the missed June 1 and the current date drives the interest portion of the result. Moving the current date forward by a month adds another 1.5% slice of interest on the unpaid balance, so the tool lets you see the cost of waiting before you commit to a payment date. If you are planning to settle the balance next week, set the current date to that day rather than today, so the figure matches what you will actually be charged.

The years-missed input handles the case where more than one annual deadline has gone unpaid. Each unpaid year stacks its own $300 tax and $200 penalty, and interest runs separately on each year's balance from its own June 1. So two missed years are not simply double a single year, because the older year has accrued more months of interest than the newer one. Setting years-missed accurately is the difference between a rough guess and a usable number. If you have paid some years and skipped others, count only the unpaid cycles, since paid years carry no penalty or interest forward.

A worked example: one missed year

Suppose a founder in Lagos formed a single-member Delaware LLC and treated it as inactive. The $300 franchise tax for the prior year was due June 1, and the founder did not pay. By the time they open the estimator, four months have passed since that June 1. The tool starts with the $300 base tax, adds the flat $200 penalty, and then applies interest of 1.5% per month on the unpaid balance for four months. The interest line is roughly 6% of the balance for that span, so the total lands meaningfully above $500 once penalty and interest are included. The exact figure depends on whether interest is computed on the tax alone or on the tax plus penalty, which is why you should treat the output as a close estimate and confirm the final amount with the state.

The lesson from this example is that the penalty dominates a short delay while interest is still small. At four months, the $200 penalty is the largest single add-on, far bigger than the accrued interest. That is useful to know, because it means there is no penalty advantage to paying in month one versus month four beyond the modest interest difference. The flat penalty is already locked in the moment you pass June 1. What you control after that is how much interest you allow to build, which the estimator quantifies for you.

A worked example: several missed years

Now consider a founder who formed an LLC three years ago, never filed or paid, and only discovered the obligation when a bank asked for proof of good standing. Three annual cycles are unpaid. The estimator stacks three $300 tax amounts and three $200 penalties, then runs interest on each year from its own June 1. The oldest year has accrued the most months of interest, the middle year fewer, and the most recent year the fewest. The combined result is well above what a single year would suggest, often pushing past $1,500 once every penalty and every month of compounding-style monthly interest is counted across the three balances.

This is the scenario where founders most often underestimate, because they assume a dormant company owes nothing or that the state "forgot" about them. Delaware does not forget. The unpaid amounts keep growing, and an LLC that falls far enough behind can lose its good standing, which blocks you from getting a Certificate of Good Standing that banks and payment processors sometimes request. The estimator gives you the full back-owed figure in one view so you can budget for a single catch-up payment rather than being surprised line by line.

What underlying rule is the tool built on?

The estimator encodes Delaware's statutory treatment of the LLC annual franchise tax. The tax itself is a flat $300 per LLC per year, regardless of income, assets, or activity. The late structure has two fixed components written into how the state assesses overdue accounts: a $200 penalty for failing to pay by June 1, and interest of 1.5% per month on the unpaid balance. The tool does not invent these numbers. It applies them to your dates so the output mirrors the state's own approach. Because the penalty is flat and the interest is monthly, the formula is essentially base tax plus $200 plus 1.5% times the number of delinquent months, repeated per unpaid year.

It is worth stressing what the tool is not. It does not cover the Delaware corporation franchise tax, which can run into thousands of dollars under the authorized-shares method and is calculated completely differently. It also does not cover registered agent fees, which are a separate private charge from your agent and not a state tax. And it does not cover federal obligations such as Form 5472 paired with a pro forma Form 1120, where a single missed filing carries a $25,000 penalty. The estimator stays inside the lane of the Delaware LLC franchise tax and its late charges, so pair it with separate checks for those other deadlines.

What are the most common mistakes founders make with this calculation?

The frequent errors cluster around a few predictable points, and each one throws off the total in a specific direction.

• Confusing the LLC with a corporation, then expecting share-based math instead of the flat $300.
• Assuming a dormant or never-used LLC owes nothing, when the $300 is due regardless of activity.
• Entering the date the LLC was "started" informally rather than the Certificate of Formation acceptance date.
• Forgetting that the first year is not prorated, so a company formed in December still owes a full $300.
• Counting paid years as missed, or missing years as paid, which mis-sets the years-missed input.
• Treating the $200 penalty as per month rather than as a one-time flat charge per year.

The penalty mistake is the one that causes the most panic, because founders sometimes believe the $200 multiplies every month and conclude they owe far more than they do. It does not. The $200 is a single flat charge per delinquent year, and only the 1.5% interest piece grows month by month. Getting this right turns a frightening guess into a manageable number. The opposite mistake, undercounting, usually comes from forgetting older unpaid years, so when in doubt, list every June 1 since formation and mark each as paid or unpaid before you trust the output.

What edge cases change the result?

Several situations sit at the boundaries of the standard calculation and deserve a second look. A company formed very close to June 1 may or may not have a deadline yet, depending on which side of the date the formation fell, so the years-missed count can be zero even for a company that already exists. A company that paid some years and skipped others needs the unpaid years isolated, because the estimator should only stack penalties and interest on the cycles that were actually missed. And a company in the process of cancellation still owes franchise tax for years it existed, since closing the LLC does not erase prior obligations.

Another edge case is the founder who is mid-month when they run the tool. Interest accrues by the month, so whether a partial month counts as a full month of 1.5% depends on the state's assessment when you actually pay. The estimator gives you a clean monthly figure, but the official invoice may round differently at the boundary of a month. Treat the result as a tight estimate rather than a penny-exact bill. If the difference between two payment dates matters to your budget, run the tool twice, once for each date, and compare, rather than assuming the in-between value scales perfectly.

What should a non-resident founder do with the result?

Once you have a total, the practical next step is to pay the franchise tax through the Delaware Division of Corporations rather than letting interest keep running. For a non-US founder without a US card, payment can be made from an account at one of the fintech banks that serve non-residents, such as Mercury, Wise, Relay, Lili, or Payoneer, once that account is open. Paying promptly stops the 1.5% monthly interest from adding to the balance, and it restores or preserves your LLC's good standing, which you may need if a bank or processor later asks for a Certificate of Good Standing. The estimator's total is the figure to budget against before you log in to pay.

After clearing the back tax, set a recurring reminder for the next June 1 so the situation does not repeat, since the $300 is owed every year for as long as the LLC exists. If you ran the tool only to model a future scenario, use the years-missed and current-date inputs to plan ahead rather than to react. And keep the franchise tax separate in your mind from your federal filings: the Form 5472 and pro forma Form 1120 obligation, the free EIN you obtain by filing Form SS-4 (which the IRS typically returns in about 8 to 10 business days for non-residents), and the fact that US-formed LLCs have been exempt from FinCEN beneficial ownership reporting since the interim final rule of March 26, 2025. The estimator handles the franchise tax late math; those other items each have their own deadlines and consequences.

How does losing good standing change what you owe?

Falling behind on the franchise tax does more than add penalty and interest. Once an LLC carries unpaid franchise tax, Delaware lists the entity as not in good standing, and that status has consequences the estimator's dollar total does not show directly. A company out of good standing cannot obtain a Certificate of Good Standing, which is the document banks, payment processors, and some vendors ask for when they want proof the entity is current with the state. So the real cost of waiting is not only the growing 1.5% monthly interest the tool calculates but also the practical doors that close while the balance sits unpaid. If you are mid-application with a bank that wants standing confirmation, the estimator's total is the amount that stands between you and that document.

The estimator total is therefore best read as the price of restoring standing, not just a bill. When you pay the full back-owed figure the tool produces, the entity returns to good standing once Delaware processes the payment, and you can then request the certificate you need. A few situations make this slower: if the company has been delinquent for a long span, the state may require every prior unpaid year cleared at once before standing is restored, which is exactly why the years-missed input matters. Use the tool to total every unpaid cycle before you pay, because a partial payment that covers only one year will not lift the not in good standing flag, and you will have spent money without unlocking the certificate you were after.

How does this differ from the Delaware corporation franchise tax?

Founders sometimes find this estimator while actually owing a corporation tax, and the two are not interchangeable. The LLC franchise tax this tool models is a flat $300 per year, the same for every LLC regardless of size or activity, which is what makes a clean late calculation possible. The corporation franchise tax is a different animal: Delaware calculates it under either the authorized-shares method or the assumed-par-value-capital method, and the result can range from a few hundred dollars to many thousands depending on share counts and reported capital. A corporation also faces a different penalty figure and a different due date than the June 1 LLC deadline, so plugging corporation facts into this LLC tool produces a number the state will never bill.

Confirm your entity type before you trust any figure here. The clearest signal is your formation document: a Certificate of Formation means an LLC and this tool applies, while a Certificate of Incorporation means a corporation and you need a separate corporate calculation. The confusion is common among non-US founders because both entities are marketed together and both file in Delaware, but the tax mechanics diverge completely. If you run this estimator on an LLC and the resulting total feels far lower than a quote you saw elsewhere, the quote you saw was almost certainly a corporation estimate, not a sign that this tool understated your LLC balance.

How can you verify the official amount before paying?

The estimator gives you a tight working figure, but the authoritative number lives on the Delaware Division of Corporations system, and you should confirm there before sending money. Look up your entity by name or file number and the state will display the current balance, including any years it considers unpaid and the penalty and interest it has assessed. Compare that displayed total against the estimator output line by line: the $300 base per year, the $200 flat penalty per year, and the 1.5% monthly interest. If the two match within a few dollars, you can pay with confidence. If they diverge sharply, the usual reason is a years-missed count that differs from the state's records, which the lookup will clarify.

• Pull your entity record and note every year the state marks as unpaid.
• Check that the base tax shown is $300 per year, not a corporation figure.
• Confirm the penalty is a single $200 per delinquent year, not a monthly charge.
• Re-run the estimator with the exact years-missed the state lists, then compare totals.

Small gaps between the estimate and the official total are normal and usually come from how a partial month of 1.5% interest is rounded at the boundary. A large gap is a signal to stop and reconcile rather than overpay or underpay. Overpaying does not advance future years automatically, and underpaying leaves the not in good standing flag in place, so matching the state's figure exactly is the goal. Treat the estimator as the tool that tells you what to expect and the state lookup as the final word on what to send.

How should you keep records after you pay?

Once you clear the balance, the payment confirmation becomes a document worth keeping, not a receipt to discard. Save the Delaware payment confirmation, the date you paid, and the total amount, because if a bank later questions your standing you can show both the cleared balance and the official confirmation. This matters most for non-US founders who manage the LLC from abroad, since a clean paper trail substitutes for the in-person presence a domestic owner might rely on. Keep these records with your other formation papers: the stamped Certificate of Formation from the $110 filing, your EIN confirmation, and any franchise tax history.

A simple practice is to keep one folder per tax year so the next time you run this estimator you already know which years were paid and which were not, which makes the years-missed input trivial to set correctly. That habit prevents the most common future error, double-counting a year you already settled or skipping one you forgot. Pair the records with a calendar reminder for the next June 1, because the $300 returns every year the LLC exists, and the cheapest version of this tool's output is the one where the answer is zero because you paid on time. Good records turn this estimator from a panic tool into a quick annual check.

When does paying for help make sense versus paying the state directly?

The franchise tax itself is paid to Delaware, and no service can make the $300, the $200 penalty, or the 1.5% monthly interest cheaper, because those are statutory amounts set by the state. What a paid service can do is handle the filing and payment on your behalf, which some non-US founders prefer when they are juggling a registered agent, an EIN, and federal forms at the same time. A one-time service fee, such as a $297 package, is a separate private charge for that help and is not part of the estimator's total. The tool deliberately shows only what the state assesses, so you can see the government obligation cleanly before deciding whether to add any optional assistance on top.

For a single missed year on a simple single-member LLC, paying the state directly is straightforward once you can fund the payment, and the estimator's total is all you need to budget. The case for paid help grows when several years are unpaid, when the entity is near cancellation, or when you also need to catch up on the Form 5472 and pro forma Form 1120 filing whose missed-filing penalty is $25,000, since coordinating all of that at once is where mistakes happen. Whichever route you choose, run this estimator first so you walk in knowing the franchise tax number, rather than letting any service quote you a bundled figure you cannot break down into its state and service parts.