Kansas Foreign LLC Registration (Form FA)

K.S.A. 17-7931 says a foreign entity must register before doing business in Kansas, and no statute defines what that means. What the legislature wrote instead is K.S.A. 17-7932, a list of eleven activities that do not count. Maintaining, defending, or settling an action is exempt. So are internal affairs and meetings, bank accounts, offices for transferring the company's own securities, sales through independent contractors, and orders that must be accepted outside Kansas to become contracts. Borrowing or lending, collecting debts and foreclosing on collateral, interstate commerce, and a stand-alone deal wrapped up inside 30 days are on it too.

Item seven is the odd one out. It covers a sale concluded outside Kansas under which the seller delivers machinery, plants, or equipment into the state and, as part of the contract, supplies the engineers or skilled workers to supervise installation, with those services and nothing more. Not on the list at all: owning property. Several states exempt it, and Kansas does not, so an LLC holding Kansas land or equipment should not assume it is covered.

Holding a role as member or governor of a company that does business here is not, by itself, doing business. Whether a company can be served, taxed, or regulated under other Kansas laws is left to those laws.

Kansas has one form for every kind of foreign business: Form FA, the Application for Registration, Foreign (non-Kansas) Business, revised March 2, 2026. The Secretary of State's page is direct about the route, noting that foreign entities must file by paper, since the domestic forms offer online filing and Form FA does not. You print it, sign it, and mail it to the Business Services Division in Topeka with payment by check or credit or debit card. Once processing is complete, Kansas mails a certified copy of the application back to the sender. No card fee is stated, no processing time is published, and no expedite service is listed.

The form itself prints a fee of $115.

The application asks for the legal name registered in your home state (no DBAs or trade names), the home state or country, the Kansas resident agent, the street address of the registered office in Kansas, the date you began doing business in Kansas if that date is in the past, the formation date, and a description of the nature and character of the work you will carry on here. The signer declares everything true under penalty of perjury. The company also consents to being sued in any Kansas county court, and the filing becomes public record.

Our checkout lists a state-fee line of $115 next to our $199, so your total today is $314.

Kansas is one of the states where nothing from your home state is attached. Instead of a certificate, K.S.A. 17-7931(d) asks for a statement made under penalty of perjury that the company exists in good standing under the law of its home jurisdiction as of the day of filing, and Form FA prints that statement for you to sign. The form mentions a home-state certificate once, only as a place to find the formation date.

Because you are swearing to it, check your home-state standing before you sign. If the LLC is behind on reports or has lapsed at home, fix that first.

Register under the exact name on file in your home state. Kansas does not register DBAs, fictitious names, or trade names. Under K.S.A. 17-7933 the name has to be told apart, on the state's records, from other entities, reservations, and names canceled or forfeited within the past year.

A conflict has two ways out. The other entity can give written consent on the state's Form CN, attached to your application. Alternatively, the foreign company can agree to identify its home state as part of its name when it advertises in Kansas, and the application sets out that condition (the form calls it a "letter of advertising"). That second option is not open if the existing Kansas business is a domestication from your home state.

Kansas uses the words "resident agent" and "registered office," and every foreign entity must keep both in the state (K.S.A. 17-7934). The statute lets the agent be the entity itself, an individual who lives in Kansas, a Kansas business entity in good standing, or an out-of-state entity authorized to transact business in Kansas. An individual agent must be reachable at a designated Kansas location frequently enough to receive service. A Kansas business serving as agent must keep an office that is generally open at the registered office address.

For the registered office itself, Kansas takes a street, rural route, or highway address and rejects a P.O. box. A change of agent later is Form ROA, $30 online or $35 on paper. If you drop the agent or the registered office, the registration can be forfeited.

Kansas keeps score of the date your business began in the state. Under K.S.A. 17-76,126, an LLC that skipped registration may not bring any suit in Kansas until it registers and pays all fees and penalties for the years it operated unregistered. Your contracts remain valid, the other party can still sue on them, you may defend a case, and members and managers are not personally liable for the company's obligations solely because it was unregistered.

The practical cost is back reports. The date on Form FA determines which Information Reports would have been due, and each one that was not filed in its reporting period, going back as far as ten years, has to be filed with the application along with its fee. If any report is being filed after its forfeiture date (three months after the reporting period ends), the form adds a one-time $85 penalty. For example, a company that started in 2022 and registers in late 2026 owes the reports due in 2024 and 2026, the $85, and the registration fee. Courts also have power to enjoin an unregistered foreign entity from doing business in Kansas, and the attorney general may bring that action (K.S.A. 17-7937).

A registered foreign LLC files an Information Report every two years, and which years depends on when you registered: an even-numbered registration year means even-numbered report years, and an odd one means odd years. The report is due by April 15. Online it costs $90; on paper it is $110. An LLC that registers in 2026 files its first by April 15, 2028. After the due date there is a three-month window to file, and then the business forfeits its right to do business, which blocks any other filing until the missed reports are caught up and the business is reinstated. Form RL reinstatement is $35 plus the $85 penalty plus $110 for each missed report.

State tax registration may also apply to your business. One more oddity is printed on Form FA: a notice from the Kansas Attorney General that businesses tied to six named countries or to designated terrorist organizations that own real property within 100 miles of a military installation must register that interest with the Attorney General within 90 days of registering with the Secretary of State.

To close the registration, file Form FC, the Certificate of Cancellation for a foreign business, for $30 online or $35 on paper. The business has to be in good standing first, so a forfeited registration is reinstated before it can be cancelled. The form appoints the Secretary of State as agent for service of process and gives an address where papers can be sent.

Once we have your home-state details and the checkout answers, we prepare Form FA and mail it to the Kansas Secretary of State on your behalf. Twelve months of Kansas resident agent service are included, and the renewal after that is $149 a year. When a summons or notice reaches the agent, you get a scan uploaded the same business day, and there is no fee for it.

What you pay now covers the registration plus that opening agent year; Information Reports and Kansas tax filings sit outside it. We file paperwork; we are not a law firm.

Corporations use the same Form FA and the same checkout. The state-fee line is $115, so a corporation's total today comes to $314.