What converting to a Hawaii LLC costs, line by line

The state's own fees start at seventy dollars

The state-side minimum is $70: the $50 Articles of Organization filing and the $20 general excise tax license. Everything past that is optional or trade-driven.

The number surprises owners who priced the move off a service's checkout page. Hawaii's fees for forming and registering a single-member LLC are low, and no part of the minimum is negotiable, so the budget question is what your trade and your paperwork add on top.

This page prices each line from the state's own published fees, then shows what pushes the total up and what keeps it down. The trade pages price each trade's re-issuance separately: electricians, food trucks, salons, landscapers, and house cleaners.

$70Hawaii charges a $50 filing fee for Articles of Organization for a domestic LLC, and the general excise tax license carries a one-time $20 fee. — Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Business Registration Division, retrieved 2026-09-29

The two fees nobody avoids

The Articles of Organization are the filing that creates the company. Form LLC-1, $50, online or on paper, and the fee is not refundable if the filing is rejected. Expedited handling adds $25 where the division offers it.

The general excise tax license is the registration that lets the company do business in the state's tax system. Form BB-1, a one-time $20 fee, and the license stays active until it is closed or revoked for abandonment.

Those two fees are the conversion's floor. A sole proprietor who does nothing else, holds no trade license, trades under a legal name, and files everything personally still pays both, because the LLC cannot exist without the first and cannot lawfully do business in Hawaii without the second.

The bank account and the EIN, which most conversions also involve, cost nothing. The IRS issues the EIN free and online, and the account is between you and the bank.

$25Hawaii's Business Registration Division fee schedule states filing fees are not refundable, and expedited service adds $25 to a domestic LLC's Articles of Organization. — Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Business Registration Division, retrieved 2026-09-29

$0The IRS states that you never have to pay a fee for an EIN and that an approved online application issues the number immediately. — Internal Revenue Service, retrieved 2026-09-29

The optional lines: the trade name and the registered agent

The trade name is optional if you will trade under the company's own legal name. If the brand you built as a sole proprietor needs to keep appearing on the truck and the invoices, the state's application fee to register a trade name is $50.

The registered agent is required, but paying for one is not. Hawaii requires each LLC to maintain a Hawaii agent with a business address, and you can serve as your own. Owners who would rather not put their own address on the served-papers record pay a commercial agent, and that is a yearly vendor price rather than a state fee.

The agent fee is the one line on the page that is not published by the state, so read it off the vendor's own pricing page at the moment you buy. The comparison page lists what several services publish about their agent prices side by side.

$50Hawaii's application fee to register a trade name is $50, and an assignment of an existing registration carries a $10 fee. — Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Business Registration Division, retrieved 2026-09-29

Hawaii requires each LLC to have and continuously maintain a Hawaii registered agent, either an individual residing in the state or an entity authorized to transact business there, under HRS 428-107. — Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Business Registration Division, retrieved 2026-09-29

What a trade license adds to the bill

The trade lines are where one conversion costs $75 and another costs $500.

A licensed contractor holding a classification through the Contractor License Board pays a $25 conversion application fee, and the entity license application behind it carries its own $50 non-refundable fee. The health permit lines run by risk category: a mobile food establishment pays $300, $200, or $100 by category.

The re-issued permits are not discounts of the original. A new DOH application is a new fee, and a new entity contractor application is a new fee, so a licensed trade's conversion costs roughly the same as its original licensing on the lines the state makes it do twice.

That is the honest price of the liability wall for a licensed trade, and it is the reason the timing pages matter more than the fee pages: the licenses guide sequences the re-issuance so nothing lapses in between.

$75The Contractor License Board's conversion filing fee is $25 with application CT-15, and the contractor entity application carries a $50 non-refundable fee. — Hawaii DCCA, Contractor License Board, retrieved 2026-09-29

$300A mobile food establishment's permit fee is $300 at risk category 1, $200 at category 2, and $100 at category 3, per the Department of Health's fee schedule. — Hawaii Department of Health, Food Safety Branch, retrieved 2026-09-29

The line-by-line table

Every figure below is a state-published fee except the registered agent line, which is vendor-priced yearly. The "when it recurs" column is what makes the table a budget rather than a receipt.

Form C5Hawaii's domestic LLC annual report is filed on Form C5 with a $15 filing fee, due on the last day of the quarter matching the LLC's organization date. — Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Business Registration Division, retrieved 2026-09-29

What getting it wrong costs

The failure lines on this budget are the expensive ones, and they are avoidable.

A rejected filing forfeits the fee: "the state's fee schedule states fees are not refundable. An application that never completes is worse: a contractor application that does not finish within a year is abandoned and destroyed, and reapplying means paying the fees again under the requirements in force at that later date."

A lapsed license costs the most. A contractor license not renewed by its expiration date is unlicensed and cannot practice, and restoring one afterward costs $388 against the $338 on-time renewal, with restoration only available for sixty days.

The insurance gap is the line that never appears on a fee schedule. A claim that arrives between the old policy in your name and the new certificate in the LLC's name is the one cost on this page with no published ceiling. The contracts and insurance guide is how you keep that line blank.

$388Hawaii's Contractor License Board states that applications not completed within a year are abandoned under HRS 436B-9, and that restoring a forfeited license costs $388. — Hawaii DCCA, Contractor License Board, retrieved 2026-09-29

What year two looks like

Year two is quieter, and it is where the $0 headlines earn their asterisks.

The LLC's own recurring state cost is the $15 annual report, due on the last day of the quarter matching the formation date. An LLC formed in the same year a report would come due owes no report that year, so a formation late in the year pushes the first report past a year out.

The trade renewals keep their own calendars at their own prices: contractor renewals at $338 by September 30 of every even-numbered year, shop licenses at $176 by December 31 of odd years, electrician licenses at $306 triennially. Those prices were the same before the conversion, so the honest comparison is the LLC's added lines, not the whole calendar.

Add whatever agent and compliance services you buy, and read those renewals off the vendor's own page. The comparison page holds the first-year and year-two prices each service publishes about itself, next to the file-it-yourself route this table just priced.

September 30Hawaii contractor licenses renew by September 30 of every even-numbered year, with the active renewal at $338 for both entity and sole-proprietor licensees. — Hawaii DCCA, Contractor License Board, retrieved 2026-09-29

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