The single-member LLC compliance year, in full
Francis Webb, Founder, 1 Day EIN LLC
You formed a US LLC as its only owner, from outside the United States. Here is everything the company has to keep up with in an ordinary year — federal and state — in one list, with each item's deadline, its cost if you do it yourself, and its source.
First, the qualification that scopes this whole page: this is the calendar for a single-member LLC that has made no corporate election. If your LLC has two or more members, it is taxed as a partnership by default and runs a different federal calendar — Form 1065 and its schedules, not the forms below. If that is you, stop reading here and take this page's only advice twice over: get an accountant. Everything that follows assumes one owner.
The year, as a calendar
| When | What | Doing it yourself |
|---|---|---|
| All year | Keep a registered agent at a physical in-state address | Not possible from abroad — this one is always bought (from anyone; ours is $50/yr) |
| Your state's report month | Wyoming annual report or Colorado periodic report | $60 minimum (WY) / $25 (CO), online |
| 15 April | Form 5472 + pro-forma 1120, where the filing applies — extendable to 15 October on Form 7004 | $0 in fees, on paper to the IRS's Ogden address; the work is the hard part |
| All year | Keep records of money between you and the LLC | Free, and the input everything above depends on |
Three lines, one of them conditional. That is the whole ordinary year. Now each in turn.
1. The registered agent — continuous, statutory, unglamorous
Both Wyoming and Colorado require every LLC to continuously maintain a registered agent at a physical street address in the state. It is the one obligation with no do-it-yourself route for a non-resident — the statutes require an in-state person or company. What the role is, what it costs across the market, and why an agentless company is the expensive failure mode are covered in the registered agent guide.
2. The state report — annual, small, and the one that kills companies
One filing a year keeps the company in good standing: Wyoming's annual report at a $60 minimum, Colorado's periodic report at $25 (state fee schedules read 16 September 2026). Both can be filed online in minutes.
Miss it and a documented machine starts: Wyoming deems the company delinquent shortly after the due date and administratively dissolves it 60 days after the missed deadline; Colorado walks it through noncompliant and delinquent statuses and eventually releases its name. The full timelines, from both states' own pages, are in what happens when an LLC falls out of good standing.
3. The federal information filing — the conditional line
Whether your LLC has to file depends on its ownership and on the transactions it had during the year. For a foreign-owned single-member disregarded LLC, the filing — where it is due — is Form 5472 attached to a pro-forma Form 1120, on paper to the IRS in Ogden, by 15 April for the previous calendar year. Reportable transactions are broad: the IRS instructions expressly include contributions to and distributions from the entity, and amounts connected with forming it — which is why a first year in which somebody funded the company or paid its costs rarely has nothing to report, and why a genuinely empty year has no filing at all. The penalty regime — $25,000, then $25,000 per further 30 days after IRS notice — plus the full scope test are in the Form 5472 guide.
What deciding this needs is not a formation company's opinion but your own numbers: what moved between you and the LLC this year. Keep that record (item 4) and the question answers itself — or gives your accountant what they need to answer it.
4. Records — the free obligation that feeds the other three
No form on this page asks for anything you cannot reconstruct from one habit: a record of every transfer between you and the company — money in, money out, costs you paid personally on its behalf. It is the input to the 5472 question, the evidence if any figure is challenged, and the difference between a filing that takes minutes and one that takes a forensic weekend.
What this page deliberately leaves out
Income tax, in both directions. Whether you personally owe US tax, whether your home country taxes the LLC's profits, treaty positions, and state-level taxes if the company operates somewhere physically — all real questions, all owner-specific, none of them answerable by a page. That is accountant territory, and the cost of getting it wrong exceeds anything on this page except the 5472 penalty.
Beneficial ownership reporting. US beneficial-ownership rules have changed repeatedly in recent years, including in who they cover. We take no position here on whether your company is covered — check FinCEN's current guidance directly, dated the day you read it.
Licences and platform requirements. Selling regulated goods, or onto specific marketplaces, adds requirements this page cannot see.
What the year costs, bought as a service
Each line above is buyable separately — agent and US address $50, state report filed for you $150 with the state fee included, the federal filing where due $200 — or the whole calendar is one $350 Compliance Plan renewal: agent, address, report and 5472/1120, one date, one invoice. Separately those are $400, so the plan is $50 less. All four prices are on /pricing. The plan covers the work and the fees; the two totals it reports — money from the LLC to you, and from you to it — still come from you, because they are facts about your year that only you have.
This page is general information, not tax or legal advice — the items above are the published obligations, and how they apply to your company depends on your facts. State pages and IRS instructions linked were read 16 September 2026. Next quarterly re-check: 1 December 2026.