"US LLC for Non-Residents: Address, EIN, Bank — 2026 Walkthrough"

You don't need a visa, US residency, or a trip to Miami to own a US LLC. What you do need is three things, in order: a real commercial address USPS and the IRS will accept, an Employer Identification Number from the IRS even if you have no Social Security Number, and an online bank that opens accounts for foreign-owned LLCs. Federal tax law treats non-resident aliens as eligible owners of US business entities IRS Publication 519 — U.S. Tax Guide for Aliens, and Florida's LLC statute imposes no citizenship or residency test on members Florida Statutes Chapter 605 — Florida Revised Limited Liability Company Act. The three gates below are what most providers do not explain in plain English.

The legal backbone is short: Title 26 of the US Code recognizes non-resident aliens as taxpayers and owners of US entities IRS Publication 519 — U.S. Tax Guide for Aliens; Florida Chapter 605 governs the LLC itself Florida Statutes Chapter 605 — Florida Revised Limited Liability Company Act; IRS Form SS-4 is the on-ramp to an EIN without an SSN IRS Form SS-4 Instructions — Application for Employer Identification Number; and 31 USC §5336 imposes the federal beneficial-ownership filing that ties the whole structure to a verifiable owner of record 31 USC §5336 — Corporate Transparency Act (Beneficial Ownership Reporting).

Can a non-resident own a US LLC?

Yes. No federal or Florida statute conditions LLC ownership on citizenship, residency, or immigration status. The IRS confirms this from the tax side — Publication 519 treats non-resident aliens as ordinary participants in US business structures IRS Publication 519 — U.S. Tax Guide for Aliens. Florida confirms it from the entity side — Chapter 605 defines who can be a member of an LLC and the list contains no nationality clause Florida Statutes Chapter 605 — Florida Revised Limited Liability Company Act.

What changes for a non-resident is the operational layer, not the legal one. You cannot walk into a Miami branch to open an account, you cannot give the IRS a US street address you have never visited, and you cannot ignore Florida's public-registry filings because you live in Bogotá or Mexico City. The work is in handling three external systems — USPS, the IRS, and the banks — from your home country, on a timeline that respects how each one moves. The legal answer is settled. The operational answer is what costs people weeks when they get it wrong.

The three critical elements: address, EIN, bank

Three external systems gate every non-resident US LLC. Remove any of the three and the whole structure stalls.

The address is first because every other system asks for one. The IRS will not issue an EIN to an entity without a US address; Florida will not approve articles of organization without a principal-office and a registered-agent address; no bank will open an account to an LLC whose address resolves to a residential apartment in Santiago or a P.O. Box in Miami.

The EIN is second because once the LLC exists on paper, the IRS needs an identifier. Banks ask for the EIN confirmation letter — CP 575 — before they touch your application. The IRS issues EINs to non-resident-owned entities and the path is documented in plain English in the SS-4 instructions IRS Form SS-4 Instructions — Application for Employer Identification Number.

The bank is third because the EIN and address open the door but do not produce a working business. Online banks for non-residents publish written eligibility policies you can read before you apply. Once you know which categories accept which files, the bank step takes one application, not five.

Get those three right and the rest of the LLC — accounting, contracts, invoicing, FinCEN reporting — follows from a working baseline. Get any of the three wrong and you spend a quarter chasing rejections.

The address — what qualifies and what does not

A "Miami address" is not one thing. It is one of four categories, and only one works cleanly for a non-resident LLC.

• Licensed CMRA with a real lease and a verifiable suite. Registered with USPS through a notarized Form 1583, operating in a commercial building, suite written in the PMB# format USPS requires. The only category that survives all three filters — IRS, Florida, online banks.
• Mailbox aggregator. A SaaS dashboard that subcontracts physical receipt to dozens of underlying CMRAs. Online banks for non-residents reject these almost universally because the underlying CMRA cannot be audited and the same address appears across thousands of unrelated entities (Mercury — Non-resident LLC eligibility Mercury — Non-resident LLC eligibility (support docs, verified May 2026); Relay — Eligibility requirements for non-US LLCs Relay — Eligibility requirements for non-US LLCs (support docs, verified May 2026)).
• Residential address in your home country. Useful as the responsible-party address on Form SS-4, but unusable as the LLC's principal-office address. The IRS routes correspondence to the entity address; if that address is in Bogotá, the EIN letter and the annual notices go to Bogotá.
• P.O. Box. Not a street address. The IRS treats it as a mailing address only IRS Form SS-4 Instructions — Application for Employer Identification Number, and FinCEN's customer-due-diligence framework expects the company's address to be where business is actually conducted. Banks reject P.O. Boxes for new commercial accounts as a matter of routine.

A licensed CMRA with a verifiable suite is the only category that does all the jobs the LLC's address has to do: it receives IRS mail, satisfies Florida's principal-office field on Sunbiz, is written in a format the postal service recognizes, and survives the bank's address-verification scrape because the building actually exists at a real street number.

The EIN — how a non-resident applies without an SSN

The IRS issues Employer Identification Numbers to entities. Citizenship of the owner does not matter; what matters is that the entity exists and has a responsible party who can be identified.

For a foreign owner with no SSN and no ITIN, the path is documented in the IRS instructions for Form SS-4 IRS Form SS-4 Instructions — Application for Employer Identification Number. File Form SS-4 by fax or by mail to the international EIN unit — the online EIN application is closed to applicants without an SSN or ITIN, so fax is the practical default.

On the form, the responsible-party address is your foreign residential address. The entity address is the US commercial address you set up in the previous step. In the SSN/ITIN field for the responsible party you write "Foreign" — the IRS instructions explicitly contemplate this case IRS Form SS-4 Instructions — Application for Employer Identification Number. Turnaround by fax is typically four to six weeks. Confirmation arrives as CP 575, the letter banks expect to see scanned into your application.

A common mistake: confusing EIN with ITIN. The EIN identifies the LLC; the ITIN identifies you as an individual taxpayer. Most single-member non-resident LLCs never need an ITIN unless the owner personally receives US-source income that requires individual filing IRS Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) Program. When that comes up, an IRS-accredited Certifying Acceptance Agent in your country can verify your passport locally so you do not have to mail it to Austin, Texas IRS ITIN FAQ — Acceptance Agents for Non-Residents.

The bank — categories of online banks for non-residents

Online banks for non-residents are a category, not a brand list. Three things distinguish them from each other in ways that matter to a non-resident applicant.

First, stated eligibility. Banks publish who they accept. Some accept foreign-owned single-member LLCs with a foreign owner and a US commercial address (Mercury — Non-resident LLC eligibility Mercury — Non-resident LLC eligibility (support docs, verified May 2026)). Others require at least one US-resident beneficial owner or a US-based operating presence (Relay — Eligibility requirements for non-US LLCs Relay — Eligibility requirements for non-US LLCs (support docs, verified May 2026)). Read the eligibility page before you apply; the difference between "we accept" and "we accept under conditions" is the difference between a clean application and a polite rejection.

Second, the documentation set. The standard pack is: articles of organization filed in your state, EIN confirmation letter, US commercial address, foreign passport, proof of foreign residential address. Some banks also ask for an operating agreement and a Beneficial Ownership Information confirmation. None of this is mysterious; all of it is documented in the bank's onboarding flow before you submit.

Third, the address-verification step. Banks scrape the address you submit and check it against public registries — USPS CRD, Google Maps, building lease records. A licensed CMRA address passes; a residential apartment fails; an aggregator address often fails because the building lookup shows a generic SaaS-mailbox suite. The address is the silent filter that decides most non-resident applications before a human ever reads the file.

For the operational details of bank acceptance — the documents, the operational-presence checks introduced in 2025, the categories of bank to consider — the banking-acceptance guide is the deep dive. This pillar gets you to the door; the banking guide gets you through it.

The process step by step (and the timeline)

End to end, a non-resident LLC takes two to four weeks of elapsed time and roughly one day of focused work.

Week 1: secure the CMRA address and sign Form 1583. Notarization is done by video with a US-commissioned notary, explicitly authorized by USPS since May 2024 — the form-1583 guide covers the workflow. With the address active, file the Florida articles of organization on Sunbiz and pay the state fee.

Week 2: with the LLC formed, fax Form SS-4 to the IRS international EIN unit. The four-to-six-week IRS turnaround is the longest single wait in the process. While you wait, draft an operating agreement, set up a US business phone number, and queue the bank application packet so you can submit the day the CP 575 letter arrives.

Week 3-4: file your Beneficial Ownership Information report with FinCEN 31 USC §5336 — Corporate Transparency Act (Beneficial Ownership Reporting). The filing is free, takes about thirty minutes, and produces a confirmation banks now expect to see. Submit the bank application the day your EIN letter clears.

Total out-of-pocket, excluding professional advice: the Florida filing fee, the CMRA's setup and monthly fee, the remote notarization fee, and the IRS EIN — which is free. The FinCEN BOI filing is free. Banks do not charge to open a business account. Most non-residents spend less than a thousand dollars in fees to stand the whole structure up.

A note on partnership versus competition: LLC formation platforms — the SaaS services that file articles of organization — are complementary to a CMRA, not a replacement. They form the entity on paper. The CMRA provides the verifiable physical address the IRS, USPS, and banks actually accept. Using both is the norm.

Per-country variants: Colombia, Mexico, and others

The three-element framework is identical regardless of your country of residence — every non-resident applies through the same address, EIN, and bank gates. What varies country to country is the local layer of documentation: how your passport is apostilled, which Certifying Acceptance Agents serve your country, and how your home tax authority expects you to report the foreign-LLC ownership.

For Colombia, the apostille runs through the Cancillería, the ITIN can be filed in-country through an IRS-accredited Certifying Acceptance Agent, and the LLC must be reported to DIAN as a foreign investment. Full walkthrough: non-residents — Colombia.

For Mexico, the apostille runs through the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, the ITIN flow uses an IRS-accredited Certifying Acceptance Agent in Mexico, and the LLC must be reported to SAT under foreign-investment rules. Full walkthrough: non-residents — Mexico.

For residents of countries we have not yet documented at country level, the general framework on this page applies cleanly — only the apostille route and the home-country reporting form change. The address, EIN, FinCEN, and bank steps are identical across countries.

What NOT to do

Five errors generate the bulk of stalled non-resident LLC applications. Naming them is half the cure.

1. Using your home residence as the LLC's address. That sends every IRS notice and every official Florida correspondence to your apartment in another country. It also flags the LLC as a personal pass-through to most US banks. The LLC's address must be a US commercial address.
2. Contracting a mailbox aggregator and calling it a commercial address. Aggregators look cheap and convenient on the marketing page; their addresses fail bank verification almost universally Mercury — Non-resident LLC eligibility (support docs, verified May 2026). Pay for a licensed CMRA with a verifiable suite instead.
3. Skipping the Form 1583 notarization or using a non-US notary. A foreign notary's signature is not valid for USPS purposes regardless of any apostille; only a US-commissioned notary works. See the form-1583 guide for the remote-video workflow USPS authorized in 2024.
4. Applying for an ITIN you don't actually need. Most single-member non-resident LLCs do not need an ITIN to operate the business. The EIN identifies the entity, and the bank typically does not require the owner to have an ITIN IRS Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) Program. Apply for the ITIN only if a specific income event or bank requirement makes it necessary.
5. Ignoring the FinCEN Beneficial Ownership filing. The Corporate Transparency Act imposes the filing on most LLCs and the penalties are not trivial 31 USC §5336 — Corporate Transparency Act (Beneficial Ownership Reporting). The filing is free and quick; missing it is a self-inflicted wound.

Summary

A non-resident can own a US LLC without a visa, without residency, and without a trip to Miami. The three elements that matter are a real commercial address USPS and the IRS will accept, an EIN issued through Form SS-4 even without an SSN IRS Form SS-4 Instructions — Application for Employer Identification Number, and an online bank for non-residents whose published eligibility policy fits your file. Federal law treats non-resident owners as legitimate participants in US business IRS Publication 519 — U.S. Tax Guide for Aliens and Florida law imposes no nationality test on LLC members Florida Statutes Chapter 605 — Florida Revised Limited Liability Company Act. The mistakes that cost time are predictable: residential address on the LLC entity field, aggregator address instead of a licensed CMRA, missing the FinCEN beneficial-ownership filing 31 USC §5336 — Corporate Transparency Act (Beneficial Ownership Reporting). Avoid those and the whole structure stands up in three to four weeks.

FAQ

Can a non-resident own a US LLC without a visa or US residency?

Yes. US federal tax law explicitly contemplates non-resident alien owners of US business entities IRS Publication 519 — U.S. Tax Guide for Aliens, and Florida's LLC statute imposes no citizenship or residency test on members or managers Florida Statutes Chapter 605 — Florida Revised Limited Liability Company Act. You do not need a visa, a green card, or a US tax residency to be the sole owner of a Florida LLC.

Can I get an EIN without a Social Security Number?

Yes. The IRS issues EINs to foreign-owned entities whose responsible party has no SSN or ITIN. File Form SS-4 by fax or mail to the international EIN unit and write "Foreign" in the SSN/ITIN field; the IRS instructions describe this path explicitly IRS Form SS-4 Instructions — Application for Employer Identification Number.

Do I need an ITIN to open my LLC's bank account?

Usually no. Online banks for non-residents typically accept a passport plus the LLC's EIN. You will need an ITIN later if you receive US-source income that requires individual filing IRS ITIN FAQ — Acceptance Agents for Non-Residents. When you do need one, an IRS-accredited Certifying Acceptance Agent in your country can verify your passport so you do not have to mail it to Austin.

Why won't an aggregator address work for a foreign-owned LLC?

Online banks for non-residents reject addresses that resolve to mailbox-aggregator domains because their underlying CMRAs cannot be audited and because the same address often appears across thousands of unrelated entities. A licensed CMRA with a real lease, a suite visible on Street View, and a notarized Form 1583 on file produces a clean file Mercury — Non-resident LLC eligibility (support docs, verified May 2026).

Do I have to file the FinCEN Beneficial Ownership report?

Most LLCs owned by non-residents must file a Beneficial Ownership Information report with FinCEN under the Corporate Transparency Act 31 USC §5336 — Corporate Transparency Act (Beneficial Ownership Reporting). The filing is free, takes about thirty minutes online, and accepts foreign-issued passports as identifying documents.

Can I run the LLC entirely from my home country?

Yes. US LLC law does not require physical presence by members or managers Florida Statutes Chapter 605 — Florida Revised Limited Liability Company Act. What it does require is a registered agent with a Florida street address and a principal-office address on the public Sunbiz record. Your CMRA address satisfies both.

Which state is best for a non-resident LLC — Florida, Wyoming, or Delaware?

There is no single best state. Florida is the natural fit if you want a Miami business address and serve clients in the Southeast or in Latin America. Wyoming and Delaware have their own merits — stronger anonymity in Wyoming, well-tested corporate case law in Delaware. The address-EIN-bank triangle works identically in all three IRS Publication 519 — U.S. Tax Guide for Aliens.

Need a Miami business address?

If you need a verifiable Miami business address that USPS accepts for Form 1583, that the IRS accepts on your SS-4, and that online banks for non-residents accept on your LLC, we have three plans based on what you want to delegate. Our Brickell address is a real commercial CMRA with a verifiable suite, an active lease, and the building visible on Street View. Form 1583 review, notarization coordination, and CRD registration are included. See the full comparison on the pricing page.

You may also want our guides on banking acceptance for non-residents — the next gate after address and EIN — and on Sunbiz privacy if your LLC is in Florida.

Sources

Last updated: May 2026