Still Paying Doola $1,999/yr for Your Form 5472? Switch to $299.

Every provider on this page delivers the same federal filing for a foreign-owned single-member LLC: one Form 5472 attached to one pro forma Form 1120, mailed or faxed to the IRS. What differs is not the form — it is what each company wraps around it and how much they charge for the bundle. The table below shows the published 2026 pricing side by side.

Read down the price column and the gap is obvious. The actual IRS work is the same at the bottom of the table as at the top. The difference between $299 and $1,999 is $1,700 a year — money spent on a bundle when all you legally need is the form.

The savings are not a discount or a promotion — they are what is left when you stop paying for a bundle you do not need. A foreign-owned SMLLC with no employees, no US bookkeeping, and no payroll does not need a $1,999 compliance suite. It needs one form filed correctly and on time.

Over three years, the doola gap alone compounds to roughly $5,100 in fees for a filing that costs $299 each year elsewhere. For a single-owner LLC running lean, that is real money kept in the business.

There is nothing dishonest about doola's price — it simply answers a different question. doola sells an annual compliance subscription aimed at founders who want a single vendor to handle everything: bookkeeping, registered-agent service, state reports, tax advice, and the federal filing. For some businesses that bundle is worth it. For a dormant or single-owner foreign LLC, most of the bundle sits unused.

What you are actually paying for in the bundle

The Form 5472 itself is a small part of the package. The $1,999 covers a year of services stacked around it. If your LLC has no US bookkeeping to do, no employees, and no complex tax position — which describes the large majority of foreign-owned SMLLCs — you are buying capacity you will not use. The form that the IRS actually requires is the same one form5472.tax files for $299.

The point is not that bundles are bad — it is that you should not pay bundle pricing when you only need one line item. If Form 5472 is the only federal filing your LLC owes, paying $299for exactly that is the rational choice.

This is the part that makes the price gap so striking: there is no “premium” version of Form 5472. The IRS publishes one form. The rules under IRC section 6038A, in force for foreign-owned disregarded entities since January 1, 2017 (Treasury Decision 9796), apply identically to every filer. A $1,999 plan and a $299 plan submit the same document to the same P.O. box in Austin.

What you should compare is not the form — it is correctness and price. form5472.tax files Form 5472 plus the pro forma 1120, has a specialist review it, and submits it the way the IRS requires. The output is the same package doola delivers, at roughly one-seventh the cost.

Switching is simpler than people expect, because the Form 5472 filing is a standalone federal task. It is not tied to your formation provider, your bank, or your registered agent. You give form5472.tax three things and it handles the rest.

You do not need to wait for your doola or Firstbase plan to end. Your federal Form 5472 obligation is annual and separate, so form5472.tax can prepare the current year's filing immediately for $299, whether or not your old subscription is still active.

A common worry is that leaving a formation provider somehow unwinds the company. It does not. Your LLC was formed under state law and exists independently of any subscription. Your EIN is issued by the IRS directly to the entity. Your registered agent is a separate state-level service that you can keep, change, or move on your own schedule.

What changes and what stays the same

What changes when you switch to form5472.tax: who prepares and files your federal Form 5472, and the price you pay — $299 instead of $1,999. What stays exactly the same: your company, its EIN, its bank account, its state status, and the IRS rules it must follow. The switch is purely about the filing, not the entity.

Some founders, frustrated by doola's price, simply cancel and file nothing. That is the one choice that can cost far more than any subscription. The penalty for a missing or incomplete Form 5472 is $25,000 for each form, each year — and because it is an unfiled information return, there is no statute of limitations. A year you skipped can be assessed years later.

The penalty also compounds. If the IRS sends a notice and the form is still not filed within 90 days, an additional $25,000 applies for each 30-dayperiod the failure continues. Set against that exposure, the choice is not “$1,999 vs. $0” — it is “$1,999, $299, or a $25,000 risk.” Paying $299 to file correctly is the cheapest way to make the risk disappear.

This is where price and correctness meet. No provider — not doola, not Firstbase, not form5472.tax — can e-file a foreign-owned disregarded entity's Form 5472. The IRS does not accept it electronically. The only two valid methods are mail and fax, and the filing must keep dated proof so the submission date can be established if the IRS later asks.

Because timely filing is the only defense against the $25,000 penalty, form5472.tax retains the fax confirmation or certified-mail receipt for every filing. You get the same correct submission doola provides, with the proof on file — for a flat $299.

Not everyone should switch, and it is worth being honest about that. The question is simple: do you use the rest of the bundle? If your LLC has active US bookkeeping, payroll, multiple state filings, and you genuinely rely on a single vendor for all of it, a bundled plan may earn its price. If it does not — and for most foreign founders it does not — you are paying for shelf space.

For the typical foreign-owned single-member LLC — formed, funded, and run by one non-resident owner — the answer is to switch. Virtually every such LLC has at least one reportable transaction (even funding the LLC counts), so it almost certainly must file Form 5472 anyway. Doing exactly that for $299 is the lean, correct choice.

It helps to see the $1,999 broken into its parts, because the number only makes sense as a year-round service stack, not as a price for one tax form. doola's annual-compliance plan is built for founders who want a single vendor managing the whole back office of a US company: the state registered-agent slot, monthly books, the state annual report, a tax professional on call, and the federal filing at year end. Bundle all of that and $1,999 is a subscription price, not a form price.

The catch is that a foreign-owned single-member LLC with no US income, no employees, and no day-to-day bookkeeping uses almost none of it. For that owner, the only piece the IRS actually demands is Form 5472 attached to a pro forma Form 1120 — the exact package form5472.tax prepares and files for a flat $299. Everything else in the bundle is optional capacity.

Where the $1,999 actually goes

Strip the bundle down to the single required line and you are left with one form and one pro forma return. That is precisely what form5472.tax delivers — Form 5472 prepared, specialist-reviewed, and filed by mail or fax — for $299 instead of $1,999. You are not losing a service you were using; you are dropping a year of capacity you were not.

Firstbase is structured in tiers, and the exact mix of services shifts between them. A lower tier may cover formation upkeep and a registered agent but treat the year-end tax filing — including the Form 5472 plus pro forma Form 1120 a foreign-owned SMLLC needs — as an add-on or as a benefit reserved for a more expensive tier. The result is that two Firstbase customers paying different prices can get very different coverage of the one filing that carries the $25,000 penalty risk.

That makes the comparison less about a single sticker price and more about what your specific tier actually files for you. With form5472.tax there is no tier to decode: the $299 flat fee is the Form 5472 plus pro forma 1120 filing, prepared and submitted, full stop.

If your Firstbase plan already files Form 5472 and you use the rest of the tier, that may be fine. But if you are paying $999–$1,499 and the Form 5472 is an extra line — or you are not using the surrounding services — the same federal filing costs $299 at form5472.tax, saving you $700–$1,200 a year for an identical IRS package.

Switching providers cannot create an IRS problem, because there is no IRS relationship tied to a provider in the first place. Form 5472 is an annual information return filed under IRC section 6038A by the reporting entity — your LLC. The IRS records the filing against your EIN, not against doola or Firstbase. Change preparers and nothing on the IRS side moves: same entity, same EIN, same statute, same April 15 deadline.

What stays fixed when you switch

Your LLC keeps existing under state law. Your EIN stays attached to the entity. Your bank account and registered agent are untouched. You do not need to wait for an old subscription to lapse, because each tax year's Form 5472 is a separate filing — form5472.tax can prepare the current year immediately for $299 while your old plan is still running, then you cancel it on your own schedule.

The one thing that genuinely matters to the IRS is that the return is filed correctly and on time — mailed to P.O. Box 149342, Austin, TX 78714-9342 or faxed to 855-887-7737, since a foreign-owned SMLLC cannot e-file. Because virtually every foreign-owned single-member LLC has at least one reportable transaction (even funding the LLC counts), you almost certainly must file. Have form5472.tax do exactly that for $299, keep your EIN and entity, and the switch carries no IRS downside.