Forming a US LLC from the United Kingdom

US ownership

100%

US visit or SSN needed to form

No

Home-country regime

GOV.UK / HMRC position — UK residents normally pay UK tax on foreign income and report it in Self Assessment; how HMRC classifies a US LLC for your facts is the adviser question on this sheet, to confirm before you form

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 $50 to $200. No US address of your own, no US visit and no US tax number is required; the EIN follows on paper — fax, phone or mail. Nothing in the UK's published framework requires permission, registration or approval for a resident to own a US company. So this sheet spends its length where the UK founder's risk actually sits: § 2, the tax classification of the LLC in HMRC's hands, and the discipline of reporting its income in Self Assessment from the first year — because the formations that go wrong in this corridor go wrong quietly, in a tax return, three years later.

What the United Kingdom asks of you

GOV.UK's page “Tax on foreign income” states the resident's position without qualification: if you are UK resident, you will normally pay UK tax on your foreign income, reported in a Self Assessment tax return, and you must report foreign income or gains of £2,000 or more, or any money you brought into the UK, in that return. Since 6 April 2025 the old remittance basis has been replaced for new arrivals by the Foreign Income and Gains regime, which GOV.UK describes on the same page — relief for qualifying new residents in their first years, not a general shelter for the established resident founder this sheet addresses. There is a UK–US double-taxation treaty, and GOV.UK's page points to relief where income is taxed in both countries; a treaty relieves double tax, it does not repeal the reporting.

The classification question — read this before you form. For US federal purposes a single-member LLC is, by default, disregarded: the IRS looks through it to you. Whether HMRC looks through a US LLC the same way, or treats it as an opaque company in its own right — so that what reaches you is a distribution from a foreign company rather than the company's income itself — is a classification HMRC makes on the entity's characteristics, and it changes the timing, the character and the paperwork of your UK tax. This sheet does not state the answer for your LLC, because no general page honestly can: operating agreements differ, and the classification follows the document. Take the draft operating agreement to a UK adviser who works on US-entity classifications before formation, while the document can still be written with the answer in mind. It is the cheapest professional hour in this entire corridor.

And the PSC register, since the plan of this sheet names it: the register of persons with significant control is a Companies House regime for UK companies and UK LLPs. A US LLC is not a UK company, files nothing at Companies House, and appears on no PSC register — that is a statement about where the register's reach ends, not a privacy feature to buy. Your ownership is visible where it matters: to the IRS on Form SS-4, to your bank on its file, and to HMRC in your Self Assessment. Founders who form in the US to become invisible have bought the wrong product; founders who form for the US market, the EIN and the US file have bought the right one.

Choosing the state from the United Kingdom

UK founders in this Atlas most often survey three states. New York ($200 to form, a $9 biennial statement) leads where the business trades on a New York presence — clients, finance, publishing — and carries the newspaper-publication requirement after formation, priced on its dossier. Florida ($125 to form, $138.75 a year, report due by May 1) is the general trading default. Colorado ($50 to form, $25 a year in periodic-report duty) is the low-carrying-cost survey pick for a founder whose customers are everywhere and nowhere. 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 United Kingdom

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 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. UK time the following day during US standard time, so a late-morning call reaches a desk that has just opened), 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

Stripe's global-availability page, read on the survey date, lists the United Kingdom — so, as with the UAE sheet, the getting-paid question here is comparative, not existential: a UK account on your UK company, or a US account on the LLC, each applied for on its own file under the platform's published terms. What the LLC adds is the domestic US counterparty: an EIN, a US formation file, and US banking that US clients and marketplaces are built to pay.

The bank file itself is the one set out on this site's EIN guide: filed Articles, the EIN confirmation, a signed operating agreement — the same document your UK adviser reviewed in § 2, which is a second reason to have it reviewed before formation rather than after — identification and address evidence matching character for character, and a specific description of the activity. UK founders clear the paperwork steps quickly; the step that stalls this corridor is inconsistency between the operating agreement, the SS-4 responsible-party entry and the bank's beneficial-owner record. One name, one address, one control story, on every page: that is the whole secret, and it is free.

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. The home side of the map is § 2: UK residents normally pay UK tax on foreign income and report it in Self Assessment (GOV.UK), with treaty relief where the same income is taxed twice — and the LLC's classification in HMRC's hands, confirmed with your adviser before formation, decides how that reporting is shaped. 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: Colorado carries this formation for $568 less than New York over five years, and New York still leads the corridor — because the state on the invoice is part of what some clients are buying. Budget the § 2 classification hour on top of every row; it is the only line item on this sheet that can change the tax outcome.

Questions from UK founders

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

Yes — no state in this Atlas requires a US co-owner, and the UK's published framework requires no permission or registration for a resident to own a US company. The obligations are tax obligations, and they are in § 2.

Is the LLC tax-transparent for HMRC, like it is for the IRS?

That is the classification question in § 2, and this sheet deliberately does not answer it from a summary: HMRC classifies a foreign entity on its characteristics, the answer follows your operating agreement, and it changes how and when you are taxed in the UK. Have the draft agreement reviewed before you form.

Does my US LLC go on the PSC register?

No — the register of persons with significant control is a Companies House regime for UK companies and LLPs, and a US LLC files nothing at Companies House. Your ownership is recorded where the US and your bank require it (§ 2); invisibility is not among this product's features.

Do I report the LLC to HMRC even if I leave the money in the US?

GOV.UK's position is that UK residents normally pay tax on foreign income as it arises and must report foreign income or gains of £2,000 or more in a Self Assessment return — the reporting does not wait for the money to arrive in the UK. The shape of the entry follows your § 2 classification.

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 UK: the Self Assessment reporting in § 2's calendar row, in the shape your classification gives it.

Sources: GOV.UK — “Tax on foreign income” (UK residents normally pay UK tax on foreign income; report foreign income or gains of £2,000 or more, or money brought into the UK, in a Self Assessment tax return; Foreign Income and Gains regime from 6 April 2025; double-taxation relief), gov.uk · 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.