Get an EIN without an SSN: fax, phone, mail and Form SS-4

The EIN is your US company's tax number, and without it there is no bank account, no tax return and no Form 5472. Without an SSN or ITIN, you cannot apply online. This guide shows the three other routes, what goes on each line of Form SS-4 and how long the IRS takes.

The company is formed, the state certificate is in hand, and the bank account could be open tomorrow. All that is missing is a number. The Employer Identification Number, or EIN, is your US company's tax number. Without it, no bank opens a business account, no company files a tax return, and no foreign-owned LLC can file its Form 5472.

For Americans, getting an EIN takes minutes: they fill in the application online and have the number by the end of the session. For founders from Europe, the road is longer, because the online process requires a US personal taxpayer number they do not have. This guide shows which routes are open to you instead, what goes into Form SS-4 and where applications typically get stuck. It is part of our guide to the tax obligations of your US company.

1What the EIN is and who needs one

The EIN is a nine-digit number in the format 12-3456789. The IRS issues it to corporations, partnerships, trusts, estates and sole proprietors with employees, and uses it to match every return and payment to a tax account. Your application opens that account. The EIN belongs to the business alone and never replaces a person's SSN or ITIN.

The IRS lists several reasons an EIN is required: employees, certain excise and employment taxes, and withholding tax on payments to nonresident aliens. Regardless of those, you need one to operate a partnership, an LLC or a corporation. In other words, every company you form in the US needs an EIN, even with no employees and not a dollar of revenue yet.

The clearest case is the LLC with a single foreign owner. For income tax purposes it is not separate from its owner, yet it must file Form 5472 every year, and for that it needs its own EIN. The SS-4 instructions even provide a specific designation for this case. Which other US numbers exist and what ITIN, SSN and TIN are for is explained in our guide to the US tax number.

2Company first, then the number

The order matters. The IRS requires an LLC, partnership or corporation to be formed with the Secretary of State of its state before it applies for an EIN. Apply earlier and you risk delays. The reason is simple: line 1 of the application carries the company's name exactly as it appears in the formation document, including LLC, Inc. or Corp. That name only exists once the state has registered the company.

The IRS is strict about names. Its systems only accept letters, numbers, hyphens and the & sign. A period, plus sign or @ in the name is spelled out or replaced with a space, a slash becomes a hyphen, and an apostrophe is dropped without a space. The street address gets 35 characters, using US Postal Service abbreviations. If you adjust the spelling from the formation document here, use that same form on every return afterward.

Before you apply, you should also know how the company will be classified for tax. Without an election, a single-member LLC is a disregarded entity and a multi-member LLC is a partnership. If it should be taxed as a corporation, you check Corporation on the SS-4 and file the election on Form 8832. The EIN application itself is not a classification election; it only describes it.

3The four ways to get an EIN

The IRS offers four routes, and which ones are open to you depends on two questions: does the company have a residence, principal place of business or office in the US, and does the responsible party have an SSN or ITIN?

The IRS only issues EINs online when both apply. The application must be completed in one session, times out after 15 minutes of inactivity and is only available during set hours. Without an SSN or ITIN you cannot get through, even if your company has an office in Texas.

By phone, the IRS now only issues EINs to applicants with no residence, principal place of business or office in the US. It has closed this route to domestic applicants. Fax and mail are open to everyone. Companies with a principal place of business in one of the fifty states or Washington, D.C. use different fax numbers and mailing addresses than companies with no US presence. The table shows which.

One limit applies to every route: the IRS issues no more than one EIN per responsible party per day, whether online, by phone, fax or mail. And you should choose only one route per company. Fax and mail in parallel and, at worst, you end up with two numbers, when a company should have only one.

4The responsible party: who stands for the company on the application

Lines 7a and 7b are the reason founders from Europe cannot apply online. They name the responsible party: the person who ultimately owns or controls the company or exercises effective control over it. The IRS describes this as the person who can direct the company's funds and assets in a way that, in practice, controls the company.

This must always be an individual. If the US subsidiary is owned by your company at home, the application names not that company but the person who actually runs the subsidiary. Their SSN or ITIN goes on the form. If they have none and cannot get one, you write "foreign" or N/A on line 7b. You may not leave the field blank.

Nominees are expressly excluded. The IRS makes clear that nominees are not authorized to apply for an EIN and that such an application puts the company's data and privacy at risk. Put someone with an SSN up front just to apply online, and you create a false entry in the company's tax account. If the responsible party changes later, the company reports it within 60 days on Form 8822-B.

5Form SS-4 line by line

The SS-4 has eighteen lines, and the IRS asks you to fill lines that do not apply with N/A rather than leave them blank. The table shows the lines that matter for a company with foreign owners. Three deserve a second look.

Line 4 is the mailing address, and it matters more than it looks: the IRS sends the EIN confirmation and all later letters there. If it is abroad, write out the city, region, postal code and country in full, without abbreviations. Line 5 is the street address if different, and a P.O. box is not allowed there.

Line 9a describes the type of entity. A single-member LLC treated as a disregarded entity checks Other. If it needs the EIN because, as a foreign-owned LLC, it must file Form 5472, it adds "Foreign-owned U.S. disregarded entity-Form 5472". A multi-member LLC checks Partnership, and a corporation checks Corporation with the number of the return it will file, usually 1120.

Line 11 asks when the business started. For foreign applicants, the IRS means the date the business began or was acquired in the US. And line 17 requires a specific description of the principal activity; "consulting" works less well than "selling industrial pumps to dealers in Texas". For a corporation, an officer may sign; for an LLC, an authorized member; for foreign applicants, any duly authorized person.

6Applying by phone

If your company has no legal residence, principal place of business or office in the US, you can apply for the EIN by phone. The number is 267-941-1099. It is not toll-free, so a call from Europe will cost you. The IRS takes calls Monday to Friday between 6 a.m. and 23 (11 p.m.) Eastern Time; in most of Europe that is roughly from midday until the early hours of the next morning.

Only someone authorized to receive the EIN and answer questions about the SS-4 may call. The IRS recommends completing the form in full beforehand; the agent on the phone uses those details to set up the tax account and gives you the number. You write it in the top right corner of your SS-4, sign and date it, and keep it. If the agent asks for the signed form, you must fax or mail it within 24 hours.

The phone route is fast, but it is only open if the company genuinely has no presence in the US. A company with an office or place of business in the US, the kind Mount Bonnell Advisors sets up, counts as a domestic applicant and applies by fax or mail.

7Applying by fax and by mail

Fax is the usual route for founders without an SSN. The IRS calls it Fax-TIN: you fax the completed, signed SS-4, and the IRS faxes back a cover sheet with your EIN, usually within four business days. For that, you need to give a fax number on the form where the reply can be sent. The IRS no longer returns the completed SS-4 itself. The fax lines are available around the clock and accept EIN applications only; the IRS points out that the numbers can change without notice.

Which number applies depends on where you are based. With a legal residence, principal place of business or office in a US state or in Washington, D.C., you fax 855-641-6935. Without one, you fax 855-215-1627 from within the US or 304-707-9471 from abroad.

Mail takes longer. The IRS recommends sending the SS-4 four to five weeks before you need the EIN and quotes about four weeks for a reply. The address is Internal Revenue Service, Cincinnati, OH 45999, marked Attn: EIN Operation for companies based in the US and Attn: EIN International Operation for everyone else. You can check the status of a mailed application at 800-829-4933. When volumes are high, the IRS itself warns of longer processing times.

8The Third Party Designee: when someone else applies for you

In the lower part of the SS-4, you can authorize another person to answer questions about the application and receive the new EIN. The IRS calls this person the Third Party Designee. For the authorization to be valid, you must complete the signature section of the form. It ends the moment the IRS assigns the EIN and gives it to the designee.

The designee receives the number through the channel used to apply: online, by phone or by fax. The IRS's written confirmation still goes to the company. One restriction matters: if the designee's address or phone number is the same as the company's, the application must be submitted by mail or fax.

This role is not the same as a power of attorney for the tax account. The designee can see the application through, but cannot later deal with the IRS on the company's behalf. That requires separate authorizations that have nothing to do with the SS-4.

9Once you have it: what you can and can't do with the EIN

For most purposes you can use the EIN right away, for example to open a bank account, get a business license or file a paper return. It can take up to two weeks before the number shows up in the IRS TIN Matching Program and before you can file returns or pay taxes electronically. If a return is due before the EIN arrives, the company writes "Applied For" and the application date in the field.

Keep the confirmation somewhere safe. If you lose it, you can request a confirmation, Letter 147C, or a transcript of the tax account from the Business and Specialty Tax Line at 800-829-4933. You generally need a new EIN when the ownership or structure of the company changes, for example when a single-member LLC becomes a partnership by adding a second member. Changing the name, address or Responsible Party does not require a new number.

The IRS cannot delete an EIN. If the company no longer needs it, the IRS can deactivate it. And if a company ends up with two numbers by mistake, the Business and Specialty Tax Line will tell you which one applies. With the EIN in hand, the next obligations follow: the BE-13 with the Bureau of Economic Analysis within 45 days of formation, Form 5472 or Form 1065 at the end of the first year, and the calendar of all other obligations summarized in the guide to annual obligations.

In short

• Every LLC, corporation and partnership needs an EIN, and it costs nothing. First you form the company in the state, then you apply for the EIN.
• Applying online only works with a principal place of business in the US and a Responsible Party with an SSN or ITIN. Everyone else applies by fax, by mail or, without a US presence, by phone.
• By fax, the EIN usually arrives within four business days; by mail, after about four weeks. The IRS issues no more than one EIN per Responsible Party per day.
• The Responsible Party is always an individual who actually controls the company; without an SSN or ITIN, line 7b reads "foreign" or N/A.

How we help you

• Apply for an EINYour company's US tax ID, applied for by us.
• Form an LLCThe US LLC with a permanent establishment, turnkey in six states.
• Form a CorporationThe US corporation (Inc) for growth, investors and your visa.
• Corporation tax returnForm 1120 and Form 5472 for your US corporation.
• LLC and LP Tax ReturnForm 1065 and K-1 for your LLC or LP.