You don’t need US citizenship or residency to form a US LLC, and you never have to set foot in the country to do it. No visa. No Social Security number of your own. No US address required to get started. Non-residents form LLCs in Wyoming, New Mexico, and Delaware every day, usually to hold a US bank account, invoice US clients, or sell into the US market without setting up a full US business presence.

Getting the LLC formed is the easy part. Most registered agents can file the paperwork in a matter of days. What actually trips people up comes after: how you get a tax ID without a Social Security number, a filing requirement a lot of guides bury in a footnote or skip entirely, and whether you owe the IRS anything at all.

Which state should you pick?

We’ve written full guides to Wyoming, Delaware, and New Mexico, the three states non-resident owners gravitate to most, so here’s the short version specific to owning one from outside the US.

For federal tax purposes, the state you pick barely matters. The IRS taxes a foreign-owned single-member LLC the same way whether it’s registered in Cheyenne, Wilmington, or Santa Fe. What changes state to state is what you pay to stay compliant and how much of your information ends up in a public record. Wyoming charges a $60 minimum annual report and keeps members off the public filing. Delaware has no annual report for LLCs at all, just a flat yearly tax that recently rose from $300 to $400. New Mexico has historically had no ongoing report either, though a 2024 law may have quietly introduced one, and we couldn’t fully confirm which is true in practice.

None of the three taxes income that has no real connection to that state. What actually decides your federal tax bill isn’t which state you formed in. It’s a different question entirely, covered further down.

Getting an EIN without a Social Security number

Every US LLC needs an Employer Identification Number to open a bank account, file taxes, or do much of anything official. The IRS’s online EIN application is the fastest route to one, but it requires the “responsible party” to have a Social Security number or an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. If you have neither, the online tool won’t accept your application.

The workaround is built into the same form. On line 7b of Form SS-4, where a US applicant would enter their SSN, you write “Foreign.” The IRS’s own instructions confirm that’s the correct entry when the responsible party isn’t eligible for an SSN or ITIN. You can’t leave the field blank, but “Foreign” is treated as a valid answer.

Because the online system rejects that entry, you submit Form SS-4 by fax or mail instead. Fax is faster: the IRS’s international EIN unit generally turns these around within about a week. Mail can take four to six weeks. One detail that trips people up: the responsible party has to be an actual person who controls the LLC, not a formation agent or a company. Listing your registered agent to speed things along isn’t allowed, and it can cause problems later if the IRS wants to know who’s actually behind the entity.

The filing almost everyone misses: Form 5472

By default, a single-member LLC is a “disregarded entity.” The IRS treats it as if it doesn’t exist separately from its owner for income tax purposes. That’s true when the owner is American. It stops being true the moment the owner is a foreign person.

Since 2017, a US LLC wholly owned by one non-US person has to file Form 5472 every year it has a reportable transaction with its owner or another related party, attached to a mostly blank pro forma Form 1120. Reportable transactions include things people don’t think to track: funding the LLC’s bank account counts as a capital contribution, a loan between you and the company counts, and so does a payment the LLC makes back to you.

This isn’t optional paperwork you can skip if the LLC didn’t make money. Missing the deadline or filing an incomplete Form 5472 carries a $25,000 penalty per form, and that applies even in a year the LLC owes zero income tax. Assuming no US income means no US filing obligation is the single most common way we’ve seen non-resident owners end up with an unpleasant letter from the IRS.

Do you actually owe US income tax?

This is the point where we tell you to talk to a CPA who works with international clients, because the honest answer is “it depends,” and getting it wrong gets expensive.

The short version: a foreign-owned LLC with no US employees, no US office, and nobody regularly working on its behalf inside the US generally isn’t earning income “effectively connected” with a US trade or business, meaning that income may not be subject to US federal income tax at all. Sell services from abroad through a Wyoming LLC with no US staff, and you may owe the IRS nothing on that income. Hire a US-based contractor who works for you regularly, or run operations through a US warehouse, and that answer can flip.

The Form 5472 requirement above applies regardless of whether you owe any tax. Reporting and owing are separate questions, and mixing them up is exactly how people end up penalized on a company that never earned a taxable dollar in the US.

Beneficial ownership reporting: no longer your problem

For a while, non-resident owners had one more federal filing to track: the Corporate Transparency Act’s beneficial ownership report to FinCEN, which asked who really owns and controls a company. That changed in March 2025.

FinCEN’s interim final rule, published in the Federal Register on March 26, 2025, exempted every entity formed in the United States from beneficial ownership reporting, regardless of who owns it. The rule redefined “reporting company” to cover only entities formed under foreign law that later register to do business in a US state. A Wyoming or Delaware LLC owned entirely by a non-US citizen is still a domestic entity, so it’s exempt along with every other US-formed company.

Plenty of formation guides still list beneficial ownership reporting as a requirement for foreign-owned LLCs. That was accurate before March 2025. It isn’t anymore.

Opening a US bank account is the hard part

Formation and tax filings are mostly a matter of following the right steps in order. Banking is where things get genuinely difficult, and it’s worth saying that plainly instead of pretending otherwise.

Know-your-customer requirements at US banks have tightened over the past several years, and plenty of them still want an in-person visit, or at least a US-based business address, before they’ll open an account for a foreign owner. A handful of banks and fintech platforms built for exactly this situation will open accounts remotely, but which ones and under what conditions changes often enough that naming specific names here would go stale within months. What consistently helps no matter who you apply with: your EIN confirmation letter from the IRS, a signed operating agreement, and a plain, honest explanation of what the business actually does.

You still need a registered agent

Every state requires an LLC to keep a registered agent with a physical street address in the state of formation, available during business hours to receive legal documents. As a non-resident, that means a commercial registered agent service, typically $50 to $150 a year depending on the state. This is one requirement without a workaround: no state lets you skip it just because you live elsewhere.

We haven’t run a non-resident formation end-to-end ourselves yet, so there’s no provider pick in this guide. See how we test for what we require before we’ll publish one.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a US visa to form an LLC?

No. Forming and owning a US LLC has nothing to do with immigration status. You can own one from anywhere in the world without ever visiting the US. A visa only becomes relevant if you plan to work inside the US yourself.

Does forming an LLC give me a path to US residency?

No. Business formation and immigration run through entirely separate parts of the government. Owning a US LLC doesn’t grant a visa, a green card, or any immigration status, no matter how the LLC is structured or funded.

Can I be my own registered agent as a non-resident?

No. The role requires a physical street address in the state of formation, available during business hours. Since you don’t have a US address, you’ll need to hire a commercial registered agent service.

What happens if I miss the Form 5472 filing?

The IRS can assess a $25,000 penalty per form for a late or incomplete filing, whether or not the LLC owed any income tax that year. The IRS does offer reasonable-cause relief in some situations, but talk to a tax professional before assuming you automatically qualify.