by Richard Keyt, an Arizona LLC attorney

Arizona Corporation Commission Entity Statistics as of October 6, 2018

As of October 6, 2018, Arizona had 58,011 for profit corporations, 7,361 professional corporations, 35,789 non-profit corporations, 746,683 limited liability companies, 28,145 professional limited liability companies and 14 benefit corporations.  That is 65,372 profit and professional corporations and 774,828 LLCs and PLLCs.

People form 12.8 LLCs/PLLCs for every corporation formed in Arizona.  Most people forming Arizona corporations do not know that the corporation is an obsolete entity that should be used only in a few select circumstances.

The table below shows entity formations for the Arizona Corporation Commission’s fiscal years ending June 30 from 1982 to 2016. For current year to date and historical numbers, see the Arizona Corporation Commission statistics.

Fiscal YearNew CorporationsNew LLCs
1992-19931,336
1993-1994**
1994-1995**
1995-199613,1005,630
1996-199713,2606,644
1997-199813,1908,733
1998-199913,17310,643
1999-200013,17012,862
2000-200113,20414,785
2001-200212,87217,069
2002-200313,57123,954
2003-200412,72230.793
2004-200512,24640,819
2005-200614,28253,277
2006-200711,08149,966
2007-20089,98148,455
2008-20098,19943,526
2009-20107,07645,665
2010-20117,49747,312
2011-20126,70450,328
2012-20135,96956,931
2013-20146,04048,972
2014-20155,73649,307
20205,68483,707

*The ACC’s website does not display accurate stats for its fiscal years 1993-1994 and 1995-1995.

Corporate Revocations

Arizona law requires every Arizona corporation (for profit and nonprofit) to file an annual report. Arizona law provides that an Arizona corporation that does not file its annual report before the deadline will have its charter revoked, which means the ACC will kill the corporation and it will cease to exist.

As of October 1, 2009, the Arizona Corporation Commission ceased mailing annual reports to Arizona corporations. See ACC No Longer Mails Annual Reports. I am predicting that the number of corporations that are terminated by the ACC for failure to file their annual reports will sky rocket in the next few years because most corporations do not have a method to remind the powers to be to file the annual report. In the good old days, it was receiving a hard copy of the annual report in the mail that served to remind the people running a corporation that it was time to file the annual report.

Fiscal YearTotal CorpsRevocationsPercentage
2008168,32822,10113%
2009174,95215,8179%
2010180,58716,1589%
2011179,38118,34210%
2012177.96413,4678%
2013174,43912,3677%
2014170,48511,4157%
2015160,74310,2476%