How do I form a US LLC as a non-resident?

Wyoming's articles of organization ask for the company's name, a registered agent with a physical address in Wyoming, a mailing address and a principal office address, plus a signature and contact details. Nothing on the form asks who owns the company or where they live. The state's filing fee is $100, and the articles can be filed online.

The registered agent is the one part you cannot supply from abroad. Wyoming requires every business entity to have one, to accept legal papers on the company's behalf, and the agent must be either a Wyoming resident or a business authorised to operate there, at a physical Wyoming address. A drop box does not qualify.

That is why formation services exist for non-resident founders: they file the articles and act as the registered agent. What differs between them is how they charge for it. Some take a one-time fee and bill the agent annually after the first year; others sell an annual subscription with the agent inside it. The year-one total and the annual cost afterwards can rank the providers in opposite orders, so both are shown. Stripe Atlas is the exception to Wyoming: it forms Delaware companies only, so its totals include Delaware's state fees instead.

The EIN is the company's federal tax number, and the annual filing described below needs it. The IRS's online application is closed to most non-residents: it needs the responsible party's SSN or ITIN, and it cannot be used if the principal place of business is outside the US.

The route that remains is Form SS-4. If the company has no office in the US, the IRS takes the application by phone on 267-941-1099 (not toll-free), Monday to Friday, 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern. By fax, to 304-707-9471 from outside the US, the EIN generally comes back within four business days if you include a fax number for the reply. By mail it takes about four weeks.

Two lines on the form trip people up. On line 7b, where the responsible party's SSN or ITIN would go, the instructions say to write “Foreign” if you have neither and are not eligible for one. On line 9a, a single-member LLC owned from abroad checks “Other” and writes “Foreign-owned U.S. disregarded entity-Form 5472”.

The IRS charges nothing for an EIN. A formation service that includes one is charging for doing the SS-4 for you, which is worth knowing when you compare tiers.

A single-member LLC is ignored for US income tax by default — a “disregarded entity” — unless it elects to be taxed as a corporation. When its owner is foreign, it still has a filing to make: a pro forma Form 1120 with Form 5472 attached, due on the date the Form 1120 would be. For a company on the calendar year, that is 15 April. Form 7004 extends it.

Form 5472 reports transactions between the company and its owner, and for a foreign-owned LLC that includes money paid in connection with forming it, and any contributions to or distributions from it. Paying the formation fee yourself is a reportable transaction, so the first year is never empty.

On the Form 1120 itself, only the company's name and address and items B and E on the first page are needed. The instructions direct it to be sent by fax, to 855-887-7737, or by mail to the IRS in Ogden, Utah.

The penalty for not filing Form 5472 on time is $25,000. It is the most expensive item in this guide, and the easiest to avoid.

Most formation services do not file it. Of the 10 in the comparison, 3 publish a price for doing so: doola (in its Tax and Compliance plan, $1,999/yr), Firstbase ($899/yr add-on), Clemta (in its Pro plan, $1,068/yr). The Form 5472 column in the table above shows each provider's position; otherwise, an accountant who handles foreign-owned US companies can file it. Services that file it on its own are compared in the Form 5472 table: 4 that name the company behind them, from $299 for this year's filing.

Wyoming's annual report is due each year in the month the company was formed. It carries a licence tax of $60, or two-hundredths of one percent of the company's assets located and employed in Wyoming if that is more; a company whose assets are elsewhere pays the minimum.

A report not filed by its due date makes the company delinquent on the second day of the following month. If it is still not filed sixty days after the due date, the state dissolves the company administratively.

The registered agent has to be kept on as well. Services that include it free for the first year bill it annually after that, and subscriptions keep it inside the annual fee; either way it is part of the annual cost in the table above.

The Corporate Transparency Act had required US companies to report their owners to FinCEN. A final rule published on 14 August 2026 ended that for all companies formed in the US and for US persons. A Wyoming LLC is a US company whoever owns it, so it files nothing with FinCEN. The duty now falls only on companies formed abroad that register to do business in a US state.