Form 5472 Filing Cost Comparison: $299 vs Every Competitor

Below is the full price comparison across every provider that foreign-owned LLC founders commonly consider. Every row produces the same IRS filing — a completed Form 5472 attached to a pro forma Form 1120, mailed or faxed to the IRS. The difference is what you pay and what extras are bundled in.

On a like-for-like basis — a single-member LLC filing Form 5472 with its pro forma 1120 — form5472.tax is the lowest professional price on the list. The annual bundles from doola, Firstbase, and Stripe Atlas cost several times more because they fold in services unrelated to the form itself.

The savings are easiest to see when the competitor price is set against the flat $299 fee. Because the deliverable is the same form, every dollar above $299 is money spent on branding or bundled extras rather than a better filing.

For a founder filing Form 5472 every year, the gap compounds. Over three filing years, choosing form5472.tax over doola can save more than $5,000 while producing the exact same set of IRS submissions. See the full breakdown on the switch from doola or Firstbase page.

form5472.online is the closest direct competitor — it sells the same single product, Form 5472 with a pro forma 1120, rather than an annual bundle. The only meaningful difference is price: $547versus $299. Both prepare the same nine-part form, attach it to the same shell 1120, and send it to the same IRS address in Austin.

There is no quality reason to pay the extra $248. A full breakdown sits on the form5472.online alternative page, including how the two services handle active versus dormant entities.

doola's pricing is built around an annual compliance subscription, not a single Form 5472 filing. The $1,999/year fee covers a basket of services — a registered agent, bookkeeping, and a tax filing — so the Form 5472 itself is just one line item inside a much larger bill.

That bundle makes sense only if you actually need all of it. Many foreign founders already have a registered agent through their formation provider and keep their own books, which means they pay doola hundreds of dollars for services they duplicate elsewhere. Paying $299 for the form you actually need — and arranging any extras separately — is almost always cheaper.

The compliance bundle trap

The risk with an annual bundle is that it renews automatically whether or not you used it. A dormant LLC with one capital contribution still owes a Form 5472, but it does not need $1,999 of bookkeeping. The doola alternative page walks through exactly when the bundle is worth it and when it is not.

Firstbase, like doola, sells a yearly compliance plan rather than a one-off filing. The $999–$1,499/year range depends on the tier and entity type, and Form 5472 is bundled with a registered agent, compliance reminders, and tax-prep support.

If you want a hands-off annual service, Firstbase is a legitimate choice — but you pay for the convenience. For founders who simply need the form filed correctly, the Firstbase alternative page shows the cheaper path.

Stripe Atlas is primarily a company-formation product. Its strength is incorporating a US company quickly; ongoing tax compliance is a secondary add-on that typically runs about $800+/year. Founders often discover that Form 5472 preparation is partly self-serve or routed to a partner, with the cost folded into a broader plan.

For the specific job of filing Form 5472 and its pro forma 1120, a dedicated specialist is both cheaper and clearer about scope. The Stripe Atlas alternative page compares the two on exactly this filing, and the flat $299 fee means there is no ambiguity about what Form 5472 costs.

Low price here is not a warning sign — it is the result of focus. form5472.tax does one thing: prepare and file Form 5472 with the pro forma 1120. There is no registered-agent overhead, no bookkeeping team, and no general tax-software platform to fund. A single, repeatable filing done at volume can be priced far below a full-service annual bundle.

Competitors that charge $1,999/year are not charging more for a better Form 5472 — they are charging for everything wrapped around it. When you strip the bundle down to just the form the IRS actually requires, the fair price is a flat $299, which is what this service charges.

This is the question every cost-conscious founder asks, and the answer is grounded in how the form works. Form 5472 has nine fixed parts. There is exactly one correct way to identify the reporting entity, the 25% foreign owner, and each reportable transaction. The completed form goes to one IRS office. Price changes none of that.

What you pay for in a quality service is accuracy and review — not a fancier form. form5472.tax has a specialist review every filing before it is sent, the same standard a higher-priced competitor applies. The difference is overhead, not output. A correct $299 filing and a correct $547 filing are accepted identically by the IRS.

What actually determines quality

Quality comes from getting three things right: confirming you have a reportable transaction, completing the right parts, and filing on time by mail or fax. Any provider that does those correctly delivers a compliant return. The Form 5472 example page shows what a correct filing looks like so you can see the bar is the same for everyone.

Transparency on scope is the whole point of a flat fee. The $299 covers the complete package a foreign-owned single-member LLC needs, with nothing held back as an upsell.

Note that the IRS itself charges nothingto file Form 5472 — the only government cost is the $25,000 penalty for getting it wrong. Some competitors itemize a “base price plus IRS submission fee plus active-entity fee”; form5472.tax does not. There is one price. See exactly how the two forms fit together on the Form 5472 and pro forma 1120 page.

This is the fact that makes the entire price comparison meaningful. A foreign-owned single-member LLC cannot e-file Form 5472. The completed pro forma 1120 with Form 5472 attached must be mailed to the IRS in Austin, Texas, or faxed to 855-887-7737 — those are the only two accepted methods, for every provider.

Because the destination and method are fixed by the IRS, what you are really choosing is the price of the preparer, not the quality of the filing. The how to file Form 5472 guide shows the exact submission steps.

Doing it yourself is genuinely free in terms of fees — the IRS charges nothing for the form. But the downside is severe. The penalty under IRC section 6038A(d) is $25,000 per form, per year, and it applies to a return that is late, incomplete, or substantially wrong, not just one that is never filed.

The most common DIY errors are assuming a zero-income LLC need not file, trying to e-file, forgetting the pro forma 1120, and missing the April 15 deadline. Each can trigger the full penalty. Measured against the risk, a flat $299 for a specialist-reviewed filing is inexpensive insurance.

The math on DIY risk

A single $25,000 penalty equals roughly 83 years of the flat professional fee. Even a small chance of an error makes DIY the expensive option in expectation. Use the penalty calculator to see your exposure if you have unfiled years.

A common frustration with compliance services is the “base price” that balloons at checkout. form5472.tax avoids this entirely with one number. The pro forma 1120, the specialist review, and the filing are all inside the flat $299.

Be wary of any quote phrased as “base price plus IRS submission fee plus active-entity fee.” The IRS does not charge a submission fee for Form 5472, so any such line item is a markup. With a flat fee, the price you see is the price you pay.

Because every foreign-owned LLC with a reportable transaction must file Form 5472 every year, the right comparison is multi-year, not one-time. A small per-filing gap becomes a large total gap over the life of the company.

Over three filing years, choosing form5472.tax over doola saves more than $5,000 for the same three IRS submissions. The longer you operate the LLC, the larger the saving. Annual compliance context is covered on the LLC annual compliance page.

The decision comes down to scope. If your only obligation is filing Form 5472 correctly and on time, paying a flat $299 for exactly that — and nothing more — is the rational choice. If you genuinely want a single vendor to handle registered agent, bookkeeping, and tax all year, an annual bundle has value, but you will pay several times more.

Most foreign-owned single-member LLC founders fall into the first three rows. If you are unsure whether you even have a filing obligation, run the do I need to filequalifier first, then come back to compare price.

A common pricing trick in this market is to charge a lower “dormant” rate and a higher “active” rate for the exact same form. The IRS does not draw that distinction in the fee — Form 5472 is free to file either way, and a dormant LLC with a single capital contribution still has a reportable transaction and must file. form5472.tax keeps it simple with one flat fee for both.

If your LLC has had no activity beyond a formation contribution, you still file — see the dormant LLC page — and you should not be charged a premium for it. A capital contribution alone is a reportable transaction that triggers the filing requirement.

The real cost comparison is not just provider versus provider — it is any provider versus the penalty for filing wrong. Under IRC section 6038A, the IRS imposes a $25,000 penalty for each Form 5472 that is filed late, filed incomplete, or never filed. There is no maximum cap, and there is no statute of limitations until the form is filed, so an unfiled year stays open indefinitely.

Viewed this way, the price difference between providers is rounding error next to the penalty. The point of paying anyone is to avoid the $25,000 exposure. Use the penalty calculator to estimate your own number, and read the Form 5472 penalty page for how the IRS assesses it.

form5472.tax does not run a surge-pricing model, so the flat $299 is the same in March as it is on April 14. What changes near the deadline is risk: a Form 5472 attached to its pro forma 1120 is due on April 15, the same date as the income-tax return it accompanies. If you need more time, filing Form 7004 by April 15 moves the deadline to October 15.

Because the price is flat, the only reason to act early is to remove deadline risk and leave room for review. See the Form 5472 deadline page for the full calendar and the extension page for how Form 7004 works.

If you discovered you should have been filing Form 5472 and missed prior years, each year is its own return. form5472.tax prepares back-year filings at the same flat $299 per year, so three missed years is three filings — still a fraction of the penalty exposure on those same years.

Filing the missing years promptly is the standard way to stop the exposure from growing, since there is no statute of limitations until each form is filed. The catch-up filing page explains the process, and missed Form 5472covers what to do first. Note that form5472.tax prepares and files the forms; form5472.tax does not represent clients before the IRS.

Since the form is free to file, every dollar you pay is for getting it right, not for access to the form. The value is in avoiding the four mistakes that trigger penalties: failing to recognize a reportable transaction, completing the wrong parts, omitting the pro forma 1120, or using a filing method the IRS will not accept.

See what a completed return looks like on the Form 5472 examplepage, and which dealings count on the reportable transaction page. The fee is small insurance against an expensive mistake.

Founders often confuse the two obligations because both apply to foreign-owned LLCs. They are entirely separate: Form 5472 is an IRS information return filed with a pro forma 1120, while the beneficial ownership information (BOI) report is filed with FinCEN. The flat $299 here is for the Form 5472 filing only.

Keep the two straight so you do not assume one filing covers the other. The BOI vs Form 5472 page compares them side by side, and the BOI report filing page covers that requirement on its own.

One advantage of a per-filing flat fee over a bundle is that there is no recurring commitment. An annual plan at $999–$1,499/year or $1,999/year locks you into a subscription that auto-renews; if your LLC dissolves, goes dormant, or you switch providers, you can still be billed for the year. With a flat $299 per filing, each year is a standalone decision.

If you are unsure whether you even need to file in a given year, run the do I need to file qualifier first. A dormant LLC may still owe a return — see the dormant LLC page — but you only pay when you actually file.

Whether the 25% foreign owner is in China, India, Turkey, Nigeria, Canada, or the UK, Form 5472 is the same nine-part IRS form filed with the same pro forma 1120. The owner’s country affects items like tax-treaty positions on other forms, not the Form 5472 fee, which stays a flat $299 for everyone.

Country-specific guidance exists for context — for example the Indian owners, Chinese owners, and Turkish owners pages — but the price and the form do not change with nationality.

The math favors per-filing pricing unless you actively use the bundled extras. An annual plan only beats a flat $299 per year if the registered agent, bookkeeping, and tax support inside it are worth more to you than buying them separately — which, for a simple disregarded entity, they usually are not.

For founders of a foreign-owned single-member LLC who handle their own books and already have an agent, the flat fee is the lowest total cost. The foreign-owned single-member LLC page covers the obligation in full, and LLC annual compliance shows what else, if anything, you actually need each year.

The cleanest way to compare is to price the same deliverableeverywhere: one Form 5472 with its pro forma 1120, filed by mail or fax. Strip out anything else a provider folds in, then look at the single number. Any quote that splits into “base price plus IRS submission fee plus active-entity fee” is inflating a free filing.

With one transparent number, the comparison is simple: the flat $299 includes the form, the pro forma 1120, the review, and the filing. See exactly how the two forms fit together on the Form 5472 and pro forma 1120 page, then run the penalty calculator to weigh the fee against the risk.

Switching from an annual provider to a per-filing one is straightforward because Form 5472 is a standalone IRS return, not a service tied to a platform. When your doola or Firstbase renewal comes up, you can decline it and file the form you actually need through form5472.tax for a flat $299.

The switch from doola or Firstbase page walks through the transition, and the doola alternative and Firstbase alternative pages compare each one in detail.

Pricing does not spike as the deadline nears, but the practical cost of waiting is less review time and more deadline risk. Form 5472 with its pro forma 1120 is due April 15, or October 15 if you file Form 7004 for an extension by April 15. Filing well ahead keeps the flat $299 stress-free.

The takeaway is to file early for the same price and lower risk. The Form 5472 deadline page lays out the calendar and the extension page explains how Form 7004 buys six more months.

Total cost of ownership is where the flat fee stands out most. The IRS charges nothing to file Form 5472, so the only unavoidable annual cost for a simple disregarded entity is the preparer fee. At a flat $299, that is the floor — everything above it in a bundle is optional spend.

For founders who keep their own books and have an agent through formation, the all-in annual cost is the flat $299. The LLC annual compliance page covers the full checklist, and foreign-owned disregarded entity explains why the pro forma 1120 wrapper is required. Note that form5472.tax prepares and files the forms; form5472.tax does not represent clients before the IRS.

The IRS publishes the Form 5472 instructions, and nothing stops a founder from preparing the form alone. The genuine cost of that path is not money — it is the risk of an error the IRS penalizes at $25,000 per form, per year, with no cap and no statute of limitations until the form is filed. The flat $299 fee converts that open-ended risk into a fixed, small number.

If you do want to understand the mechanics yourself, the Form 5472 instructions page summarizes them, and how to file Form 5472 shows the mail-or-fax steps. Many founders read those, then decide the flat fee is cheap insurance against the penalty.