Forming a US LLC from the UAE

US ownership

100%

US visit or SSN needed to form

No

Home-country regime

UAE Government Portal position — the UAE does not levy income tax on individuals; federal corporate tax (0% to AED 375,000, then 9%) reaches foreign entities only where they conduct a trade or business in the UAE, so how you run the US company from the UAE is a question to confirm with a local adviser

Membership, year one

$399/yr

The sheet in one view

Forming the LLC is a state filing: Articles of Organization, a registered agent in the formation state, and a fee that in the three states surveyed below runs from $125 to $300. No US address of your own, no US visit and no US tax number is required, and the EIN follows on paper — fax, phone or mail. The UAE side, uniquely among the sheets in this Atlas so far, imposes no foreign-exchange permission on the funding: there is no authorised-dealer category to fit and no central-bank approval to obtain. What this sheet spends its length on instead is the comparison in § 2 — free-zone company against US LLC, function by function — because most UAE founders asking this question already own one company and need to know what the second one is for.

What the UAE asks of you

The UAE Government Portal states the personal position in one sentence: the UAE does not levy income tax on individuals. There is no personal filing that a US LLC triggers at home, no exchange-control regime governing money you send abroad, and no published restriction on a UAE resident owning a foreign company outright. If your only question is “may I?”, the Portal's answer is that nothing in the UAE's published framework stands in the way.

The corporate-tax page of the same Portal adds the one nuance this sheet will not skip. Federal corporate tax — 0% on taxable income up to AED 375,000 and 9% above it, under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 — applies, in the Portal's own list, to businesses and individuals conducting business activities under a UAE commercial licence, to free-zone businesses, and to foreign entities and individuals only if they conduct a trade or business in the UAE in an ongoing or regular manner. A US LLC that you direct day-to-day from a desk in Dubai or Abu Dhabi sits close to that third line. Whether managing your US company from the UAE brings it — or you, conducting its business — inside UAE corporate tax is a classification question this sheet does not answer from a portal summary: confirm it with a UAE tax adviser before the company starts trading, not after its first financial year closes.

Then the comparison. A free-zone company is the right instrument for UAE substance: a UAE licence, UAE banking, visas, and a corporate-tax registration of its own, with a 0% rate available on qualifying income for a Qualifying Free Zone Person that meets the conditions. A US LLC does none of those things — and does the things the free-zone company cannot: it is a US person for US purposes, holds a US EIN, opens US banking on a US file, signs with US clients as a domestic company, and is the entity US marketplaces and payment platforms are built to onboard. Founders who need both usually need them for different jobs — UAE substance and residency on one side, US market access on the other — and the cost of finding out they are not substitutes is a year of trading through the wrong one. When in doubt, map the functions first (§ 5), then form.

Choosing the state from the UAE

UAE founders in this Atlas most often survey three states. Florida ($125 to form, $138.75 a year, report due by May 1) is the trading-company default — the state US counterparties in the Gulf corridor most readily recognise. New York ($200 to form, a $9 biennial statement) is chosen when the business genuinely trades on a New York presence, and carries the state's newspaper-publication requirement after formation, priced on its dossier — which is why this Atlas does not recommend it on fee alone. Texas ($300 to form, no Secretary of State annual report) minimises recurring state paperwork to the Comptroller's May 15 franchise-tax and Public Information Report. If your reading keeps landing on Wyoming or Delaware, both are sold here on the same terms as every other state: this service covers 50 states + DC, at joining and at renewal, and their dossiers — Wyoming and Delaware — carry the verified fees and duties. Puerto Rico is not served by this Atlas.

The EIN from the UAE

Your LLC needs its own Employer Identification Number, and you do not need an SSN or an ITIN first. The IRS's routes for an applicant whose principal place of business is outside the United States are: by phone on 267-941-1099 (not toll-free, Monday–Friday 6 a.m.–11 p.m. Eastern — that window is 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. Gulf time the following day during US standard time, so plan the call for your afternoon), by fax to 304-707-9471 from outside the US (855-215-1627 from within it), or by mail to the IRS's EIN International Operation in Cincinnati. Fax returns the number generally within four business days when a return fax number is provided; mail takes approximately four weeks; and a new EIN can take up to two weeks to pass the IRS's TIN-matching systems even though it is usable immediately for a bank account, licences and paper returns. On Form SS-4, the responsible party is you — the individual who ultimately owns or controls the company — and line 7b reads “foreign” where that person has no SSN or ITIN and is not eligible for one. The full treatment — EIN basics, the routes compared, the annotated form, and what to do when the confirmation notice (CP 575, or Letter 147C if the original is lost) goes missing — is the EIN guide on this site. One EIN per responsible party per day, by any route — do not fax and phone the same application.

Banking and getting paid

Getting paid is where the § 2 comparison becomes concrete. Stripe's global-availability page, read on the survey date, lists the United Arab Emirates among the countries it supports — so a UAE founder's question is not the corridor question of whether Stripe exists at home. It is the narrower question of which entity a given platform will onboard for a given activity: a UAE company on a UAE account, or the US LLC on a US account with its EIN and US banking. Both applications are decided on the file — formation documents, the EIN confirmation, a signed operating agreement, a plain description of the activity — and a platform's published terms, not this sheet, govern each answer.

US banking follows the same file logic. Banks examine the documents set out on this site's EIN guide — filed Articles, EIN confirmation, operating agreement, identification and address evidence that match character for character, and an activity description specific enough to price. UAE founders usually clear the address-evidence step more easily than most: UAE bank statements and utility documentation are in English and in the format US onboarding teams expect. What no formation service can do is promise the account: the bank's decision is the bank's. What the membership does is hand you a file with nothing missing and nothing inconsistent — and keep the two companies' files separate, because the fastest way to stall both onboardings is to let the free-zone company's papers and the LLC's papers blur into one another.

The tax map in brief

A single-member LLC owned by a non-resident is disregarded for US federal income tax by default — and since 2017 that status carries an annual information filing: Form 5472 attached to a pro-forma Form 1120, reporting transactions with you, including your own funding of the company. The penalty the IRS states for a missing or late Form 5472 starts at $25,000. Multi-member LLCs file as partnerships instead. When a US payer needs your company's tax status documented, the form in the file is generally Form W-8BEN-E. On the home side, the UAE levies no income tax on individuals (UAE Government Portal, § 2) — the live question is the corporate-tax classification of a company you run from the UAE, and that belongs to a UAE tax adviser on your facts. Form 5472 is treated in full on this site's EIN guide. None of this page is tax advice — it is the map of which questions exist, so none of them ambushes you in your second year.

The two-row calendar — home-country + US duty

Cost of ownership

Compare five-year figures, not formation fees — and add the comparison that matters in this corridor: the LLC's five-year carrying cost against the free-zone licence renewal you already pay. For most founders the LLC is the smaller number by a wide margin, which is exactly why it should be bought for its functions, not as a cheaper substitute.

Questions from UAE founders

Can a UAE resident own 100% of a US LLC?

Yes, on both sides: no US state in this Atlas requires a US co-owner, and the UAE's published framework places no restriction on a resident owning a foreign company. The one classification to confirm is the corporate-tax one in § 2 if you will run the company from the UAE.

Do I still need my free-zone company if I form a US LLC?

They do different jobs (§ 2): the free-zone company carries UAE substance — licence, visas, UAE banking — while the LLC is the US-facing entity with the EIN and the US file. Most founders who hold both use each for its own side of the business.

Does the UAE tax what my US LLC pays me?

The UAE Government Portal states that the UAE does not levy income tax on individuals. Corporate tax is the separate question: it reaches foreign entities only where they conduct a trade or business in the UAE in an ongoing or regular manner — confirm your position with a UAE tax adviser (§ 2).

Can the US LLC use Stripe?

Stripe's global-availability page lists the UAE, read on the survey date. Whether a given account is opened for the UAE company or the US LLC is the platform's decision on each entity's file and its published terms (§ 5).

What do I owe each year?

In the US: the state duty for your formation state (table above), the $399 membership renewal from year 2 if you stay with us, and the federal information filing for your structure (§ 6). In the UAE: no personal income-tax filing on the Portal's position; any corporate-tax registration question belongs to the § 2 adviser conversation.

Sources: The Official Platform of the UAE Government — “Other taxes” (“The UAE does not levy income tax on individuals”) and “Corporate tax (CT)” (Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022; rates 0% to AED 375,000 and 9% above; corporate tax applies to foreign entities and individuals only if they conduct a trade or business in the UAE in an ongoing or regular manner), u.ae · IRS — “Employer Identification Number” and Instructions for Form SS-4 (Rev. December 2025), irs.gov · Instructions for Form 5472 (penalty), irs.gov · Stripe global availability, stripe.com/global, read 2026-11-07 · State fees and duties: data/state-fees.json, verified against official state sources 2026-11-03/04. Surveyed 2026-11-07. Education, not advice: this sheet is formation information, not legal, foreign-exchange or tax advice.