Wyoming’s new $1,400 expedited filing does not cover the annual report
Wyoming’s new $1,400 expedited filing does not cover the annual report
2026-09-19 · Wyoming · Compliance
What happened. Wyoming authorised the Secretary of State to charge up to $5,000 to expedite corporate filings, and the office set the fees at $1,400 same-day and $700 next-business-day. The service explicitly does not cover filings that can be completed online — which is where a nonprofit corporation’s annual report lives.
The act
HB0016, House Enrolled Act No. 36, became chapter 94 of the 2026 session laws. Signed March 7, 2026, effective July 1, 2026. Its sponsor was the Select Committee on Blockchain, Financial Technology and Digital Innovation Technology, and it passed unanimously in both chambers. It creates W.S. § 9-1-305(a)(viii):1
“Expediting the filing of any document filed pursuant to title 17, title 34 or title 40, chapters 1 and 2 of the Wyoming statutes, an amount not more than five thousand dollars ($5,000.00). … The fee and process for requesting an expedited filing shall be established by rule of the secretary of state … The expedition of a filing under this paragraph shall not alter the prioritization of rights determined by the timing of the filing.”
Title 17 is where the Wyoming Nonprofit Corporation Act sits, so an incorporated association’s filings are within the class.
The fees, and the exclusion
From the Secretary of State’s “How to Request an Expedited Filing,” revised June 2026:2
“Same-Day Service: $1,400.00 per document. Must be received by 12:00 noon MT on a business day. Next-Business-Day Service: $700.00 per document.” Fees are “per document and are in addition to any standard statutory filing fees.”
Not eligible: “Filings that can be completed online (e.g., annual reports, initial formations, UCC/EFS filings).”
What the exclusion means for an association in trouble
The annual report is the filing whose lapse dissolves a Wyoming nonprofit corporation, and it is the filing the expedited service will not take. There is no way to buy speed on it, because it is already an online filing with same-day effect.
What the service does reach is paper. Amendments to articles, restated articles, and the documents filed on paper in a reinstatement are Title 17 filings that are not completed online, and those are the ones a $700 or $1,400 fee can move up the queue. So the service is useful in the aftermath of a lapse and irrelevant to preventing one.
The Secretary of State also states what the fee does not buy:
“Expedited service guarantees priority examination of your document within the committed time period, but it does not guarantee approval or acceptance of the filing. If the filing is rejected and not corrected, the expedited fee is nonrefundable.”
And the statute itself says expediting “shall not alter the prioritization of rights determined by the timing of the filing” — paying to be examined sooner does not move a filing’s legal effective date ahead of anything else on record.
The fee schedule an incorporated Wyoming association actually lives on
From the Business Division filing fee schedule, revised June 2026 and stated to be effective July 1, 2026, for nonprofit corporations:3
- Articles of Incorporation / Continuance / Domestication — $50.00
- Annual Report — $25.00 flat. Nonprofits do not pay the asset-based licence tax charged to profit corporations, LLCs and LPs.
- Amendment, Dissolution, or any other filing — $25.00
- Reinstatement for tax — $25.00
- Reinstatement for no registered agent — $150.00
- Appointment of new registered agent and office — $5.00; registered agent information update — $5.00 per entity affected
- Certificate of existence or good standing — $20.00, and free online
The deadline that matters more than any fee
The Secretary of State’s stated timetable: the annual report is due on the first day of the anniversary month, delinquent on the second day of the following month, and if it is not filed within 60 days after the due date the entity is administratively dissolved. Online reinstatement is available where the entity was dissolved within the past two years and has no other delinquencies. Beyond that: “Wyoming statutes do not allow for reinstatement after two (2) years in an administratively dissolved standing.”4
Twenty-five dollars a year, and a two-year cliff at the end of it. In Conger v. AVR Homeowner’s Association, Inc., 2025 WY 91, the Wyoming Supreme Court held that a dissolved association “lacks the capacity to create new covenants or to engage in ongoing governance or enforcement activities,” and put the burden of proving a continuous chain of authority on the successor entity. The dissolution in that case had gone unnoticed for nearly twelve years.
Nothing else at the Secretary of State changed
The expedited-filing service is the only 2026 change to the Business Division that reaches Wyoming associations. The office’s published announcements through 2026 are otherwise entirely election-related; there is no new filing system, no change to annual report requirements or registered-agent rules, and no beneficial-ownership guidance — the last of which is now moot for domestic entities in any event.
Related Wyoming HOA Topics
- HB0016 (2026), House Enrolled Act No. 36, ch. 94 — enrolled act creating W.S. § 9-1-305(a)(viii) ↩
- Wyoming Secretary of State, “How to Request an Expedited Filing,” revised June 2026 ↩
- Wyoming Secretary of State, Business Division Filing Fee Schedule, revised June 2026 (effective July 1, 2026) ↩
- Wyoming Secretary of State, Business Division FAQ — annual report deadlines, administrative dissolution, two-year reinstatement limit ↩
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