How to relocate my company from Virginia

---

Start Your Redomestication Now

The Redomestication Process in a Nutshell

1. Enter your biz name HERE.

Then click "get exact price" and follow the steps.

Takes less than five minutes.

Submit payment securely online then sit back and relax.

24-48 hours

2. We prepare the legal docs.

Our dually-licensed attorney+CPA prepares the legal documents and sends them to you via DocuSign.

You sign. We take it from there.

Same Day

3. We submit the legal filings to the states.

We monitor the status closely, respond to inquiries from their offices, and send you weekly updates.

No extra charge. 100% success rate.

1-3 months

4. Approved! ✅

We send you a checklist of go-forward obligations and simple steps for your tax pro to follow.

120% money-back guarantee if we do not succeed.

Did you know? The average business that moves to a state without state-level income tax saves over $12,500 in taxes per year.

Still have questions? Schedule a free meeting with our attorney and CPA.

Redomestication, also known as redomiciling, refers to the lesser-known legal process of transferring or moving the "home state" of an existing Corporation, partnership, or LLC, from Virginia to a new state. It means keeping your existing company name, credit, and federal employer identification number (FEIN) without wasting time and money creating a new business entity, applying for foreign registration, or moving assets between companies.
— Prof. Chad D. Cummings, Esq., CPA

Start Your Redomestication Now

How to relocate a company from Virginia without interrupting operations

When business owners ask, in practical terms, how to relocate their company from Virginia, the question is rarely about a change of mailing address. The issue is the company’s legal “home state” and the consequences that follow from remaining anchored to Virginia’s tax environment, legal system, and compliance framework. The objective is typically continuity: preserving the existing entity while changing the jurisdiction that governs it.

Redomestication (also described as statutory conversion) is the most direct mechanism for answering how to relocate a company from Virginia while maintaining day-to-day business stability. Properly executed, redomestication allows the entity to keep its federal employer identification number (FEIN), maintain its existing contracts, and, in most cases, continue operating under the same name. For businesses with active vendor relationships, customer agreements, banking arrangements, licensing, and credit profiles, this continuity is not a mere convenience; it is a strategic requirement.

To begin a compliant plan for how to relocate your company from Virginia, the most effective starting point is a process designed expressly for redomestication rather than improvised combinations of registrations, dissolutions, or mergers. Review how to relocate a company from Virginia through redomestication and use it as the organizing framework for your decision-making.

1) Identify the real problem: Virginia is your company’s domicile, not merely your operating footprint

A common misconception is that business relocation is primarily an operational matter. In reality, the controlling legal concept is domicile: the state under whose laws the entity exists. For owners evaluating how to relocate their company from Virginia, failing to distinguish domicile from “doing business” is where costly mistakes begin. A company can move its offices, employees, or market focus while still remaining a Virginia entity, and that distinction affects governance, annual obligations, and dispute posture.

Virginia domicile can also keep you tethered to recurring administrative duties and state-facing compliance even after operations have shifted. Many owners are surprised to learn that “moving” without changing domicile can still require periodic reporting, fees, and the risk of ongoing entanglement with the former state’s requirements. In short, if you are deciding how to relocate a business from Virginia, your plan should address the entity’s legal home state, not solely its physical activity.

Redomestication is designed specifically to change domicile while preserving the legal identity of the company. That is why, from both a legal and accounting perspective, it is the most coherent answer to how to relocate your company from Virginia without dismantling the entity you have already built.

2) Prioritize continuity: keep your FEIN, contracts, and (usually) your name

From an attorney and CPA perspective, continuity is the governing standard for high-quality entity relocation. The practical goal in determining how to relocate a company from Virginia is to avoid unnecessary “breaks” in legal identity that trigger contract novations, banking disruptions, re-credentialing, payment processor freezes, or compliance cascades. Redomestication is structured to preserve the entity’s core identifiers.

FEIN retention is one of the most consequential advantages. When owners dissolve and form a new entity, they frequently discover—too late—that they have created an avoidable federal and operational headache: new payroll accounts, revised vendor onboarding, amended tax elections, and a trail of downstream reporting issues. For owners who want a clean, defensible approach to how to relocate their company from Virginia, keeping the existing FEIN is often the single most tangible benefit of redomestication.

Contract continuity is equally critical. Most commercial agreements define the “party” with precision. If you create a new entity, you may be forced to obtain counterparty consent, re-paper master service agreements, reissue W-9s, re-negotiate credit terms, and address assignment clauses that were never drafted with a “new company” in mind. Redomestication, by maintaining the same entity, typically avoids that disruption. For implementation details, see how to relocate your company from Virginia without losing your FEIN or contracts.

3) Why redomestication is superior to foreign registration when leaving Virginia

Foreign registration is often marketed as a quick fix: keep the Virginia entity, register it as a foreign entity in the new state, and proceed. That approach can be appropriate in narrow situations, but it is frequently misapplied to owners seeking a durable answer to how to relocate a company from Virginia. The key issue is that foreign registration is not a relocation of domicile; it is an additional layer of compliance that can keep Virginia in the picture longer than expected.

When a business is no longer meaningfully operating in Virginia, maintaining a Virginia domicile while foreign-registering elsewhere can result in parallel administrative duties, duplicated filings, and avoidable complexity. Owners can also underestimate the practical burden of two sets of annual requirements and the risk that one state’s lapse triggers consequences in the other. In a mature relocation strategy focused on how to relocate your company from Virginia, unnecessary dual compliance is generally a predictable and preventable cost.

Redomestication is typically preferable because it is designed to transfer the company’s home state, rather than layering on another registration. For owners who want the most direct resolution of how to relocate their business from Virginia in a manner that minimizes ongoing entanglement, consult how to relocate a Virginia company via redomestication and compare it carefully to the long-term profile of foreign registration.

4) Why redomestication is usually preferable to a merger strategy

A merger can accomplish a change in domicile, but it is often an expensive and over-engineered solution to the question of how to relocate a company from Virginia. In practice, mergers require a second entity, additional documentation, heightened sequencing risk, and a more complicated compliance narrative. They can be appropriate in certain restructuring contexts, but using a merger solely to achieve relocation is frequently akin to rebuilding the house to change the street address.

Mergers also invite avoidable friction with third parties. Banks, payment processors, insurers, and counterparties may treat a merger as a substantive reorganization, triggering underwriting reviews, approvals, and administrative slowdowns. Moreover, owners sometimes pursue a merger after they have already created a new entity, only to discover that the “simple fix” has now become a multi-step transaction with more moving parts. For owners seeking a reliable method for how to relocate their company from Virginia, that type of procedural creep is precisely what should be avoided.

Redomestication is ordinarily the more streamlined, continuity-preserving approach. It is tailored to change domicile without the unnecessary mechanics of combining entities. If your primary objective is relocation rather than consolidation, how to relocate a company from Virginia using redomestication should be your baseline option.

5) The most expensive misconception: dissolving and starting over is not “relocation”

Owners often believe dissolution is the cleanest answer to how to relocate their company from Virginia. In reality, dissolution typically ends the entity’s legal existence and can produce a cascade of operational and tax-adjacent consequences. Even when dissolution is executed correctly, it can force re-creation of contracts, disruption to credit history, changes in licensing and registrations, and administrative reconfiguration across payroll, banking, and vendor systems.

Dissolution also creates timing vulnerabilities. If the old entity is closed before the new entity is fully functional, a business can face a gap in authority to contract, invoice, or receive payments under existing agreements. That gap can be commercially damaging and, in regulated industries, may create compliance exposure. A well-advised plan for how to relocate a business from Virginia should be built to avoid continuity gaps rather than hoping they do not occur.

Redomestication is superior precisely because it is not dissolution. It provides a structured pathway to transfer domicile while preserving the entity that already holds your contractual, financial, and reputational footprint. To evaluate a continuity-first approach to how to relocate your company from Virginia, review how to relocate a company from Virginia without dissolving.

6) Key procedural considerations business owners routinely overlook

Relocation is not merely a filing exercise; it is an integrity exercise. Owners exploring how to relocate their company from Virginia frequently underestimate how many corporate records and stakeholder actions must align to support the transaction. Depending on entity type and governance documents, approvals may be required from members, managers, shareholders, or directors. In addition, internal records should be updated so that the company’s compliance posture matches the new domicile.

Another overlooked issue is sequencing. The order of filings and internal authorizations matters, as do details such as name availability in the destination state, the impact of entity type conversion, and the correct handling of registered agent arrangements. Owners sometimes attempt a self-directed “hybrid” approach—foreign registration plus partial dissolution steps—only to discover they have created conflicting records that require professional remediation. That is not an efficient path for anyone seriously considering how to relocate a company from Virginia.

A disciplined redomestication plan minimizes these errors by using a defined legal mechanism and a predictable workflow. The most defensible approach is to treat how to relocate your company from Virginia as a formal transaction with required documentation, approvals, and post-approval obligations, rather than a collection of ad hoc filings.

7) The strategic upside: exiting Virginia’s tax environment, legal system, and business climate

Businesses commonly pursue relocation because they are dissatisfied with the ongoing cost, complexity, or risk profile of their current jurisdiction. When clients ask how to relocate their company from Virginia, they often cite concerns about administrative burden, recurring state-level obligations, or the desire to align domicile with the state where management and operations now occur. Relocation is frequently part of a broader objective: streamlining compliance and improving predictability.

Changing domicile can also be a governance and risk-management decision. The law of the domicile state typically influences internal company matters, including certain fiduciary standards, dispute resolution posture, and statutory rules that apply to entity operations. For owners who want greater alignment between their company’s legal “home” and their strategic direction, redomestication offers a structured method for leaving Virginia behind without dismantling the enterprise.

Where the facts support it, redomestication provides a clean path to reposition the entity in a more favorable environment while preserving the company’s identity. That combination—strategic exit plus operational continuity—is the core reason redomestication is frequently the best answer to how to relocate a company from Virginia.

Conclusion: a practical, continuity-first answer to relocating a company from Virginia

For owners evaluating how to relocate their company from Virginia, the most important question is not whether relocation is possible, but whether it can be accomplished without unnecessary collateral damage. Redomestication is designed to preserve what you have already built: your FEIN, your contracts, your credit profile, and—typically—your business name. It is therefore the most efficient and operationally stable mechanism for changing domicile.

In contrast, foreign registration can prolong dual-state compliance, mergers can add needless complexity, and dissolution can terminate the very entity that holds your relationships and history. From a legal and accounting perspective, the disciplined route is to use the mechanism intended for the task. If you are ready to implement a compliant plan for how to relocate your company from Virginia, begin with how to relocate a company from Virginia through redomestication.

Start Your Redomestication Now

Domestication vs. Foreign Registration vs. Merger vs. Dissolution: A Comparison

Domestication is, in many circumstances, far preferable to registering an LLC or corporation as a foreign entity, especially where the LLC or corporation has permanently moved its operations and will not be returning to the prior state in the near future.

Some attorneys, unfortunately, confuse their clients by recommending a foreign entity registration in the new state, or worse, a merger, where a redomestication™ would have accomplished the goals of moving their business to a new state efficiently and effectively.

The top seven benefits of moving your company (LLC, corporation, or partnership) to a new state via redomestication™ to transfer your business include:

1. Maintaining your existing federal employer identification number, eliminating the tax headaches of forming a new company or transferring assets between companies (and inadvertently triggering a hefty tax bill from the IRS) when you move your business to a new state;
2. Keeping your existing business credit history and track record, safeguarding your reputation with clients, vendors, and creditors when moving your LLC or corporation to a new state;
3. Continuing your existing business name (in almost every case), protecting your most important assets when moving your company to a new state: your brand, reputation, and time you have already invested in search engine optimization;
4. Maintaining your existing contracts with customers and vendors because moving your business to a new state via redomestication™ does not create a new company: it maintains your existing company, saving you dozens (or even hundreds) of hours re-writing (and re-negotiating) contracts and changing banks;
5. Eliminating the need to continue paying registration fees and taxes in your prior state (assuming you have discontinued your operations there and have permanently relocated to a new state), potentially saving you tens of thousands of dollars (or more) in state taxes every quarter when you move your business to a new state;
6. Avoiding unnecessary IRS scrutiny because moving your LLC or corporation to a new state via redomestication™ is a tax-free transaction under the Internal Revenue Code; and
7. Reducing the amount of time you spend on administrative filings, saving you untold hours annually, by moving your company to a new state.

Before taking the "penny wise and pound foolish" approach of foreign entity registration or spending countless hours and exorbitant legal fees (and possibly taxes) on a merger or merger-gone-wrong to move your company to a new state, ensure you understand your options.

In most circumstances, redomestication™ (and not a foreign entity registration or costly and complicated merger) is the best route to achieve a change in company domicile to a new state.

Start Your Redomestication Now