Annual Compliance Checklist for Foreign LLC Owners 2026

Foreign founders often assume that once the LLC is formed the work is done. It is not. The entity creates recurring llc annual filing requirements at both the federal and state level, and the federal one is the most dangerous to miss. Below is the master list; the rest of this guide walks each item in detail. For the broader picture see our US LLC annual compliance hub.

Note that BOI is no longer on this list for US-formed LLCs — that changed in 2025, and we cover it below. Everything else recurs every single year for the life of the company.

Form 5472 is an IRS information return under IRC §6038A. Final regulations under T.D. 9796 extended it to foreign-owned single-member LLCs for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2017, treating those disregarded entities as corporations for this reporting purpose only. The form reports money moving between the US LLC and its foreign owner — capital contributions, distributions, loans, and payments.

The trigger is a reportable transaction, not profit. A zero-revenue LLC that was simply funded by its owner still has a reportable transaction, so virtually every foreign-owned SMLLC must file, even with no income. Read the full breakdown of the Form 5472 penalty before you decide to skip a year — there is no statute of limitations on it.

The pro forma 1120 wrapper

A disregarded entity has no tax return of its own, so the IRS requires the LLC to attach Form 5472 to a stripped-down (“pro forma”) Form 1120 carrying only the name, address, and EIN. There is no tax calculation on it — it is purely a cover sheet so the information return has somewhere to live.

The federal deadline is the 15th day of the 4th month after the tax year ends — April 15 for a calendar-year LLC. The six-month extension via Form 7004 only extends the filing date; a disregarded entity has no entity-level tax to pay, so there is nothing to remit. State deadlines are independent of the federal one and tend to track the formation anniversary or a fixed calendar date.

Set a reminder for the earliest of these dates. A missed state report is cheap to fix; a missed Form 5472 is not.

There is no electronic filing path for a foreign-owned disregarded entity — the IRS accepts only two methods, and missing the deadline by either method triggers the penalty. Always keep a certified-mail receipt or a fax transmission confirmation, since the burden of proving timely filing falls on you.

If you would rather not gamble on the mail, our filing service prepares, reviews, and files the return for you for a flat $299.

Beneficial ownership information (BOI) reporting under the Corporate Transparency Act was a major worry for foreign founders in 2024. That changed: FinCEN's interim final rule in March 2025 narrowed the definition of a reporting company so that entities formed in the US no longer file. A foreign-owned US LLC is a domestic entity, so it is exempt. Only companies formed abroad and registered to do business in the US (foreign reporting companies) still report.

Do not confuse this with Form 5472. BOI exemption changes nothing about your tax obligations — Form 5472 remains required every year. Read the current status on our beneficial ownership information report page.

State compliance is separate from federal Form 5472 and varies widely. Wyoming charges a small annual report license tax; Delaware charges a flat $300 LLC franchise tax due June 1; New Mexico requires no annual report at all. Every state requires you to keep a registered agent with a physical in-state address, since that is how the state and courts reach a foreign owner who lives abroad.

Letting a state filing lapse does not trigger the $25,000 IRS penalty, but it does put your LLC into bad standing, which can block banking, contracts, and eventually dissolve the entity. For a deeper walkthrough of how these fit together, see our LLC annual compliance guide.

Form 5472 carries one of the harshest information-return penalties in the tax code. Because there is no statute of limitations on an unfiled information return, a year you missed in 2019 can still be assessed in 2026. The penalty stacks: each unfiled year is its own $25,000, and the continuation penalty adds another $25,000 for every 30 days you ignore a 90-day IRS notice.

We do not offer penalty-abatement or IRS representation. The reliable way to avoid the penalty is to file correctly and on time every year — see the full rule on our Form 5472 penalty page.

DIY filing is technically free, but the $25,000 penalty applies even to an honest mistake or a missed deadline, and a foreign owner abroad cannot easily fix a rejected mail filing in time. For a flat $299, form5472.tax prepares Form 5472 and the pro forma Form 1120, reviews it, and files it — far below the $547 charged by form5472.online and the $1,999/year charged by doola.

Compare every option on our pricing page, or start your filing on the apply page. Either way, the worst choice is doing nothing and discovering the penalty later.