Skip to content
corppy.

US tax for non-resident owners

Owning a US company doesn't automatically make you a US taxpayer.

But it does come with obligations — some on the company, some possibly on you. Here's the shape of it.

it depends, and "it depends" is the honest answer

Three obligations to keep straight.

  1. 01

    Your company's own obligations

    The company may have to file returns or information returns in its own right — federal and state, depending on what it does and where. For a foreign-owned entity, Form 5472 is the one that most often surprises people.

  2. 02

    Your personal obligations, if any

    Owning a US company does not automatically mean you personally file a US return. Whether you do depends on how the company is taxed and what you do — a question of your own circumstances, not a blanket rule.

  3. 03

    How the entity is taxed changes everything

    A C-corporation is taxed at the entity level. An LLC is usually a pass-through, meaning the tax result flows to the owner's own situation. This is the single biggest structural difference, and it is why entity choice matters before you earn a dollar.

The difference between pass-through and corporate tax.

This is the concept that determines most of what follows. A corporation is taxed as its own entity: it reports its own income, and its owners are taxed separately on what they take out. An LLC, by default, is a pass-through: the company itself generally doesn't pay federal income tax, and the results flow through to the owner's own tax situation.

For a non-resident owner, that flow-through is where personal obligations can appear, because the LLC's results may land on your own return. A C-corp keeps more of the action inside the company. Neither is automatically better — it depends on what you're building and where you live — but it is the decision that quietly shapes everything else, and it is worth making deliberately.

If you want to understand what you might actually owe, we don't publish numbers — instead, we wrote a guide to finding your own: what you'll owe. And whether a tax treaty changes any of this is its own question.

Choose the structure, not just the state.

We'll help you pick the entity that fits how you'll actually operate — and be straight about what's on you afterward.

Start your company →

Get founder-friendly updates.

Compliance tips, product news. No spam.