AFTER THE CP 575 · ORIENTATION ONLY — NOT TAX PREPARATION OR ADVICE

After the CP 575

The EIN is a door, not a finish line. It is what the bank account and the payment applications have been waiting for. It also starts obligations that catch foreign owners out — above all, the annual information filing for foreign-owned single-member LLCs. This page is orientation: what the obligations are, from IRS sources.

Not tax advice: This page summarizes IRS-published filing requirements in general terms. Whether and how they apply to your entity depends on your facts. Confirm against the current IRS instructions and with a qualified tax professional.

Form 5472 + pro-forma Form 1120 — the orientation

A foreign-owned U.S. single-member LLC that is a disregarded entity is treated as a corporation for one limited purpose: reporting transactions with its foreign owner and related parties on Form 5472, attached to a pro-forma Form 1120 — a corporate return completed only in its identifying parts, carrying the 5472. Key points from the IRS's published instructions:

• The filing is an information return. Filing it does not by itself mean tax is owed.
• It is triggered by reportable transactions with the owner — and ordinary funding movements, such as capital contributions to the LLC's bank account, count. “We had no revenue” is not, by itself, an exemption.
• It is due with the pro-forma 1120 by that return's due date (for a calendar-year entity, in April), with an extension available via Form 7004 — per the current Form 5472 instructions, which you should read in full.
• The IRS instructions state a $25,000 penalty for failing to file Form 5472 when due. That figure is the reason this orientation exists: the penalty attaches to a form many owners have never heard of.
• Foreign-owned disregarded entities file this return on paper / by the fax or mail route stated in the instructions — it is not a standard e-filed corporate return.

Sources: IRS — Instructions for Form 5472 and About Form 1120, via irs.gov (search “Form 5472 instructions” on irs.gov for the current revision); Form SS-4 context: IRS — Employer Identification Number. Read the current instructions before relying on any summary, including this one.

What else the EIN starts

Banking and payments. The EIN is usable immediately for most business needs, including opening a bank account — and the IRS notes it can take up to two weeks to pass TIN-matching and e-file systems. Sequence your applications with that lag in mind.

Examiner note — A bank rejection in week one is sometimes just the TIN-matching lag, not a verdict on your entity. Wait out the two weeks before treating it as a refusal.

State obligations. Your state of formation has its own calendar — annual reports, franchise or license taxes, registered-agent renewal — independent of the federal EIN. EIN Complete's first-year calendar covers both layers for your state; if you file the EIN yourself, build that calendar from your state's official pages, not from a blog.

EIN Complete includes this orientation and the calendar · Questions, answered plainly