Wyoming Nonprofit Annual Reports: The $25 Fixed Fee and Anniversary-Month Deadline

Direct answer: first day of the anniversary month, $25, no asset schedule

Every active domestic Wyoming nonprofit corporation, and every foreign nonprofit corporation authorized to transact business here, files an annual report with the Secretary of State. The due date is the first day of the anniversary month of formation or authority. The fee is $25.

That is the whole recurring obligation, and its simplicity is exactly why the two common errors are expensive. One is calendar arithmetic: treating the deadline as the anniversary date, or as the last calendar day of that month, gives an organization up to a month of imaginary time. The other is fee arithmetic imported from Wyoming for-profit guidance, which describes a license tax calculated from assets located and employed in Wyoming. Nonprofits do not use it.

The deadline: how the anniversary month actually works

The anniversary month is the month in which the corporation’s formation filing, or an authorized foreign corporation’s Certificate of Authority, became effective. The report is then due on the first day of that month, every year.

The Secretary of State’s own worked example is the clearest statement of it: an initial filing on May 15 produces a May 1 annual due date. The day of the month the organization filed is irrelevant after formation. Only the month carries forward, and inside that month the deadline sits on day one.

This is worth putting into the organization’s calendar as a recurring event with a reminder several weeks ahead, because the practical effect is that the first report is due less than twelve months after formation for every organization that did not incorporate on the first of the month.

The fee: a flat $25, and the calculation nonprofits do not perform

The nonprofit annual-report fee is $25. It does not scale with revenue, assets, membership or program size. If the organization files online, the payment processor may add its own convenience fee, which is not part of the state fee.

The Secretary of State states expressly that nonprofits pay $25 and do not report assets located and employed in Wyoming. That matters because Wyoming does operate an asset-based annual license tax for certain other entity types, and commercial summaries frequently describe it as though it applied to everyone filing an annual report in Wyoming. It does not apply to a nonprofit corporation, and the nonprofit annual-report workflow does not ask for the asset schedule.

The practical rule is simple: if a Wyoming annual-report instruction asks a nonprofit to compute a figure from its Wyoming assets, or quotes an annual fee other than $25, it is describing a different entity type. Statutory trusts and foundations also use different fees.

Foreign nonprofits file the same report

An authorized foreign nonprofit corporation is on the identical cycle: the same nonprofit annual report, due the first day of its anniversary month, at the same $25 fee, alongside the continuing duty to maintain a Wyoming registered agent.

The consequence differs in name only. Where a domestic corporation faces administrative dissolution, a foreign corporation faces revocation of its authority, and may be unable to maintain an action in Wyoming until the authority is restored. Charity, tax, employment and activity-specific accounts stay separate from the corporate filing in both cases.

What happens when the report is missed

Nonfiling does not produce an instant dissolution. It starts the statutory delinquency process, and the Secretary of State issues notice. Inside the notice period set by that notice and by Chapter 19, the organization cures: file the missing reports, pay the amounts due, and restore a compliant registered agent and registered office if that is also a ground.

Registered-agent failure sits alongside nonfiling as an independent ground, which is why a lapsed agent and a missed report so often arrive together. Curing one and not the other does not clear the default.

An uncured default results in administrative dissolution for a domestic corporation or revocation for a foreign one, and from that point the corporation’s activities are limited to winding up.

Reinstatement: a two-year door that does not reopen

Reinstatement after administrative dissolution or revocation is available, and it is time-limited. It must be sought within two years. Wyoming statutes do not permit administrative reinstatement after two years, and at that point a new entity or another legal route may be the only option, which means losing corporate continuity.

Inside the window, the organization uses the Secretary of State reinstatement service: cure every delinquency, file the outstanding annual reports, restore the registered agent and office, resolve name availability and pay what is owed. Online reinstatement is available when the entity is eligible, and a mail-in package is used where there are multiple delinquencies.

We do not publish a reinstatement total, because there is not one to publish. The amount combines the current reinstatement charge with the delinquent reports and their fees, and is generated by the Secretary of State workflow for the specific entity. Any fixed figure quoted elsewhere is a guess about someone else’s delinquency history.

Reinstatement restores the corporation. It does not revive separate licenses, exemptions or accounts: tax, employment, gaming, liquor, lobbying, campaign-finance and local registrations each have to be dealt with on their own terms.

A short annual checklist

One: write down the anniversary month, which is the month the formation filing or Certificate of Authority became effective, and set a recurring calendar reminder for the first day of that month with several weeks of lead time.

Two: budget $25 plus any processor convenience fee, and do not let anyone compute a figure from the organization’s Wyoming assets.

Three: before filing, confirm the registered agent and registered office are current, because the two most common grounds for administrative dissolution travel together.

Four: if a delinquency notice has already arrived, act inside the notice period rather than at the next annual cycle.

Five: if dissolution has already happened, check the date. Two years is the outer limit for administrative reinstatement, and it is worth confirming exactly how much of that window is left before choosing between reinstatement and forming a new entity.

Where this sits in the rest of Wyoming compliance

The annual report is the recurring corporate obligation, and for many Wyoming nonprofits it is the only recurring state filing, because Wyoming has no general state charity or fundraiser registration requirement. That absence makes the annual report disproportionately important: it is the filing that keeps the corporation alive.

It is also not a substitute for anything else. Sales and use tax accounts, property-tax exemption applications at the county, Department of Workforce Services employer registration, gaming authorization, liquor permits and lobbying or campaign-finance filings all run on their own triggers and their own calendars. The full Wyoming state guide sets out all 52 of them with the official source behind each.