Kentucky requires member and manager names and addresses, disclosed on the Annual Report — not on the Articles of Organization itself on its public LLC filing. Kentucky's Articles of Organization are clean, but its Annual Report requires member/manager names every June 30 and is public — a Wyoming holding LLC has to occupy that field, and stay there each year, for privacy to hold. See our Wyoming holding company guide and full list of anonymous LLC states for more.
$40
Articles of Organization filing fee
Names public
Member/manager names disclosed on the Annual Report
$15 + $175
Annual Report fee + LLET floor tax
§275.260(4)
Foreclosure permitted, sole member auto-dissociated
Kentucky is cheap and clean to form in — the $40 Articles of Organization ask only for the management structure, not a member or manager name. The catch arrives every June 30: the $15 Annual Report requires confirming the names and addresses of members and managers, and the Secretary of State posts them to a public search at sos.ky.gov. A Wyoming holding LLC named as the member or manager — and kept there on every subsequent report — is what keeps a Kentucky structure private long-term. It's also worth pairing for asset protection: KRS 275.260(4) permits foreclosure against a sole member and automatically dissociates them, letting the purchaser take over the company, a real gap Wyoming's charging-order statute closes.
Kentucky's Articles of Organization ask only whether the LLC is member-managed or manager-managed (KRS 275.025) — no member or manager names at formation. But the $15 Annual Report, due every June 30 under KRS 275.190 (see also KRS 14A.6-010), requires submitting or confirming the names and addresses of members, managers, and/or officers, and that filing is public at sos.ky.gov. Kentucky's formation filing looks private, but the very first Annual Report undoes that unless the listed member or manager is a holding entity rather than an individual.
Because Kentucky's Articles of Organization don't ask for a member or manager name, but the Annual Report due every June 30 does, the way to keep an individual's name off Kentucky's public record is to name a Wyoming holding LLC as the member (or manager) — and keep it the entity listed every subsequent June 30, not just at formation. Kentucky's charging-order statute is also comparatively weak for sole owners: KRS 275.260(4) permits foreclosure and automatically dissociates a sole member upon assignment of the entire interest, letting the foreclosure purchaser elect themselves the new sole member. A Wyoming parent above the Kentucky interest addresses both problems — the Annual Report's public member field and the weaker charging-order statute — with one structure.
Whatever name Kentucky's Annual Report shows, beneficial owners of the Kentucky LLC — and of a Wyoming holding LLC above it — must still be reported to FinCEN under the Corporate Transparency Act, which is not a public database.
KRS 275.260(4) — charging order generally exclusive, but foreclosure is permitted and automatically dissociates a sole member. KRS 275.260 makes a charging order the exclusive remedy generally, but KRS 275.260(4) affirmatively permits foreclosure of that lien. In a multi-member LLC, foreclosure doesn't dissociate the debtor-member from the company. In a single-member LLC, though, the sole member is automatically dissociated upon assignment of the entire interest, and the purchaser or assignee may then elect themselves the new sole member — a personal creditor's purchaser can end up owning and running the whole company, not just collecting its distributions.
Kentucky charges no franchise tax on LLCs, but does levy the Limited Liability Entity Tax (LLET) — a true entity-level tax with a $175 minimum floor every Kentucky LLC owes regardless of income, filed on Form 725. The $15 Annual Report is due June 30 each year — a fixed statewide date, not an anniversary. Pass-through income is taxed to members at Kentucky's flat 3.5% personal income rate.
Note: This page corrects an internal discrepancy over whether Kentucky publicly lists member/manager names (see dataDiscrepancyNote) — confirm the Annual Report's exact disclosure fields directly at sos.ky.gov before relying on the disclosure conclusion in a high-stakes situation. Also confirm the $175 LLET floor and $15 Annual Report fee haven't changed.
Note: apps/LLA/data/states/llc-search/ky.ts (membersPubliclyListed: false) conflicts with the more detailed apps/LLA/data/states/anonymous-llc/ky.ts, which states plainly that Kentucky's Annual Report (KRS 275.190, KRS 14A.6-010) requires the names and addresses of members or managers and that this information is publicly searchable at sos.ky.gov — the opposite conclusion. A web search of Kentucky Annual Report filing guidance corroborates the anonymous-llc account: filers must submit or confirm the names and addresses of members, managers, and/or officers each year. This page follows the anonymous-llc/web-search-corroborated account as the more authoritative source and treats Kentucky as a disclosure state (via the Annual Report, not the Articles of Organization) — the same pattern the pilot batch found for Texas, where llc-search disagreed with a more detailed, statute-cited account. The llc-search boolean for Kentucky should be reviewed and likely corrected.
Not on the Articles of Organization, which only states whether the LLC is member-managed or manager-managed. But Kentucky's $15 Annual Report, due every June 30, requires submitting or confirming the names and addresses of members and managers, and that report is publicly searchable at sos.ky.gov.
Name a Wyoming holding LLC as the member or manager, and keep it the listed entity on every Annual Report going forward — the disclosure happens on the recurring report, not just at formation, so the privacy structure has to be maintained every June 30, not set up once.
No. KRS 275.260(4) permits foreclosure of the charging-order lien, and for a sole-member LLC specifically, the member is automatically dissociated upon assignment of the entire interest, letting the purchaser elect themselves the new sole member — a materially weaker outcome than what protects multi-member LLCs.
Bottom line: Kentucky's Articles of Organization are clean, but the Annual Report publishes member and manager names every June 30 — a Wyoming holding LLC named on that report, and kept current, is what makes Kentucky privacy durable.