The Non-Resident's Handbook

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Chapter 1 — Start with the state, not the fee

Choosing on the formation fee alone is how founders get surprised: California's $800 annual franchise tax, Nevada's $350 annual list-and-licence stack, and Massachusetts's $500 formation fee are the loads that surprise founders who compared formation fees only. Cheap to form is not the same as cheap to keep. On this site's verified figures, five-year totals run from $2,030 in Montana to $5,305 in California — a spread of more than $3,000 — and none of that spread is the membership, which is the same $399 a year in every row. It is the states' own charges.

So the state question comes first, and it is answered from records instead of folklore. The state-picker asks where you live, what you sell, how you will bank, where you will actually operate, and what you want to optimise, and ranks a three-state shortlist only on the verified fee and duty dataset. Two of its answers are handled honestly: your business model and your banking plans do not move the ranking, because the verified record contains no per-state rule for either — banks and payment providers decide for themselves. A state where you will actually have an office, employees, or premises is pinned first, ahead of any fee comparison, because operating in a state is a fact about your business, not a preference. And if the state you are set on is Wyoming or Delaware, the picker ranks it on its verified figures like any other state — both are covered, at joining and at every renewal. The Wyoming–Delaware comparison page sets the two side by side.

Work your own state's arithmetic before you commit to it: the total-cost calculator prices any covered state line by line — membership, formation fee, first-year total, and the ongoing annual total — from the same dataset.

Chapter 2 — The three routes to the same LLC

Every non-resident founder forms the same legal object — an LLC created by a state filing — but the work of getting there can sit in three different places, and the formation-routes comparison works through them on the same criteria.

Yourself, directly with the state, is the cheapest route. You pay the state's filing fee and nothing for a service, because there is no service. What you carry is everything a service would otherwise carry: the formation filing itself, your own registered agent arrangement (an agent is a legal requirement in every state in this Atlas, and the agent needs an address in the formation state), the EIN application including the without-SSN route, and every deadline from the first year onward. The Atlas and the EIN guide are written so a careful founder can do exactly this.

A general formation platform prepares and files the formation from the details you supply, for its own service fee on its own published terms, with the state fee on top. What varies between platforms — and what to check on a platform's own pages before paying — is what a given price includes, what is charged separately, what renews and at what terms, and how the two pieces a non-resident specifically needs are treated: the registered agent arrangement after the first year, and the EIN application when no owner has an SSN or ITIN.

This membership is the specialist route: a self-serve membership built for founders who live outside the United States — $399/year, or $39/month with a 12-month minimum term, plus your state's filing fee passed through at cost. Year one includes the formation filing in a covered state, the registered agent for year one, and the EIN including the without-SSN route, for an entity this service forms. The work model is guided automation: filings are prepared by the service's guided process, you confirm each step, and the service transmits on your instruction. There is no dedicated human manager, no website or hosting, no business phone line, and mail handling is not included. If your structure is genuinely complex — multiple ownership classes, US partners, a regulated activity — the specialist you need may be a US attorney or accountant you engage directly; this service is not a law or tax firm.

Chapter 3 — The process, in five stations

The process page draws the route as five stations, the same for every state in the Atlas. Station 1: choose the state from the Atlas — the verified fee, the duty that repeats, and where your customers and operations actually are — and receive your Route Brief: state summary, total cost, duty calendar, EIN path. Station 2: intake, once — members, managers, the address for formation records, and the responsible-party details the EIN step needs, collected once and used for every filing that follows; you receive an intake confirmation listing exactly what will be filed, where, and for how much. Station 3: the formation is filed and a registered agent is on file from day one, as every state in the Atlas requires; you receive the filed formation document as a PDF. Station 4: the EIN, including the without-SSN route in the next chapter; you receive your CP 575 EIN confirmation as a PDF. Station 5: your obligations, on paper — the state duty from your state sheet and the federal dates that apply to foreign-owned LLCs, in writing; you receive your duty calendar, including an .ics calendar file.

Chapter 4 — The EIN, when you have no SSN

An Employer Identification Number is free from the IRS and slow for exactly the people this site serves. The online application is closed to applicants whose responsible party has no SSN or ITIN, so the route for a founder without one is Form SS-4 by fax or mail. Line 7b is the whole case: enter "foreign" when the responsible party is a foreign person with no SSN or ITIN — do not invent a number and do not borrow one. The legal name on line 1 must match the filed Articles exactly, because the IRS prints that name on the CP 575 and banks match against it. The full annotated walkthrough — every line founders get wrong, the fax and mail timelines as the IRS publishes them, the difference between a CP 575 and a 147C, and the errors that bounce applications — is the EIN guide, and the route is included in the membership's first year for an entity this service forms.

Ownership decides the federal duty that follows. A single-member foreign-owned LLC is disregarded by default, which is precisely the status that carries the Form 5472 duty: plan on Form 5472 with a pro-forma Form 1120 every year — the penalty for a missing filing starts at $25,000. A multi-member LLC files Form 1065 by default. The FAQ entry on Form 5472 sets out both, on the FAQ page.

Chapter 5 — After formation: the duty that repeats

Formation is a one-time act; keeping the LLC is an annual cycle, and the cycle is the state's, not yours. Each state sheet in the Atlas records its duty in full — an annual report, a biennial report, a franchise tax, or in a few states no recurring report at all — with its due pattern and its verified cost, and the official source it was checked against. That is why the calculator annualises the duty next to the membership renewal: the ongoing annual total is the figure your second year actually turns on.

Each membership renewal buys three things, itemised: the registered-agent renewal for the next year, the annual state filing service — the report your state requires, prepared from your confirmed data and transmitted to the state on your instruction, with the state's own fee for it still a pass-through at cost — and the compliance calendar, your duty dates tracked and reminded, state and federal, for the next year. Cancelling stops those future services; it does not dissolve your LLC, and a state filing once made cannot be undone by cancelling. Dissolution, if you want it, is a separate state filing with its own state fee. The full renewal and cancellation terms are on pricing and in the membership terms.