Opening a US LLC from India

Business Formation Last reviewed 2 September 2026 · 9 min read

You do not need to be a US citizen, a green card holder, or physically present in the United States to own a US LLC. Indian residents form them regularly — usually to sell software, services or goods to US customers who prefer to contract with a US entity.

Forming the company is the easy part, and plenty of services will do it for a few hundred dollars. What follows the formation is where foreign owners get into trouble, and there is one annual filing in particular that carries a serious penalty and that most people have never heard of. We will come to it.

Step 1: Choose the state

There is no national company register in the United States. You form in a specific state, and that state's rules, fees and annual reports apply to you.

Delaware, Wyoming and New Mexico come up most often in conversations with clients, generally for the reasons you would expect — established company law, lower ongoing fees, or fewer public disclosure requirements respectively. The honest answer, though, is that the popular choice is not automatically the right one:

• If your business has a genuine physical presence in a particular state — staff, an office, inventory held there — you will likely need to register in that state regardless of where you incorporated. Forming in Wyoming does not exempt you from California if California is where you actually operate.

• Every state charges an annual fee or franchise tax and expects a report. These differ enough to matter over the life of a company.

• Some states are noticeably easier than others when it comes to opening a bank account remotely.

For a purely online business run from India with no US footprint, the choice is mostly about cost and administrative simplicity. For anything with a physical presence, it needs actual thought.

Step 2: Registered agent and formation

Every state requires the LLC to have a registered agent — a person or company with a physical street address in the state of formation, available during business hours to receive legal and state correspondence on the company's behalf. A residential address abroad does not satisfy this, and neither does a PO box.

The formation document itself (usually called Articles of Organization or a Certificate of Formation) is filed with the state. It is short. The operating agreement, which sets out how the LLC is actually governed, is generally not filed with anyone but matters a great deal if there is ever more than one member.

Step 3: Get an EIN — without an SSN

The EIN is the company's federal tax identification number, applied for on Form SS-4. You need it to open a bank account, to be paid by many US customers, and to file anything at all.

This is the first point where being outside the US genuinely changes the process. The IRS's online EIN application requires the responsible party to hold an SSN or ITIN. If you have neither, the online route is closed to you, and the application must be submitted by fax or post instead. That is slower, and it is unforgiving of small errors on the form — a rejected SS-4 means starting the wait again.

Note that the EIN belongs to the company. It does not remove any obligation you may have as an individual, which is where an ITIN can separately come into the picture.

Step 4: The bank account

This is reliably the hardest step, and the one people underestimate. US banks are subject to strict customer identification rules, and a foreign-owned company with no US presence is exactly the profile those rules are written around.

Expect to be asked for the formation documents, the EIN confirmation, the operating agreement, passport identification for every beneficial owner, and a coherent explanation of what the business does and where its money will come from. Some banks require an in-person visit. Others will onboard remotely but apply more scrutiny.

Preparing this properly before you approach anyone is worth more than choosing the right bank. Applications fail far more often on incomplete documentation than on the bank's policy.

Step 5: The filing nobody mentions

Here is the one that matters most, and it is the reason we wrote this guide.

A single-member LLC is normally “disregarded” for US federal tax purposes — the IRS looks through it to the owner. Many foreign owners are told, correctly as far as it goes, that a disregarded LLC with no US-source income may owe no US federal income tax.

What is often left out is that a foreign-owned single-member LLC has a separate reporting obligation regardless of whether it owes any tax. It must file Form 5472, attached to a pro-forma Form 1120, reporting transactions between the LLC and its foreign owner — and capital contributions and distributions count as reportable transactions.

If you own a US LLC from India and have never filed a Form 5472, that is worth checking now rather than at the point the IRS raises it.

The ongoing obligations, in short

Once formed, an LLC keeps needing attention:

• State annual report and fee — due every year, on the state's schedule. Missing it can put the company out of good standing and eventually dissolve it.

• Registered agent — renewed annually.

• Form 5472 and pro-forma 1120 — annually, for foreign-owned single-member LLCs, as above.

• Sales tax registration — if you sell goods, or certain services, into states where you have created an economic nexus. See our sales tax page.

• Indian reporting — owning a foreign entity carries disclosure obligations under Indian law too. Coordinating both sides is the point of using an adviser who understands each.

A realistic sequence

Formation is fast. The EIN is the first real wait if you have no SSN or ITIN, and the bank account is the step whose timing you control least. Anyone promising a complete, banked, operational US company in a fixed short window is describing the best case, not the expected one.

Plan the sequence, not the deadline: state filing, then registered agent, then EIN, then bank, then compliance calendar. Each depends on the one before it.

Note: This guide is general information about US business and tax procedure, not advice on your specific circumstances. State rules, fees and federal requirements change. Please confirm the position that applies to you before acting.