The question comes up before almost every formation we handle, usually phrased with some anxiety: is this actually possible from here, or will I reach step four and be told to book a flight?
The short answer is that the entire process is remote. Not "mostly remote with one awkward exception" — genuinely remote, from the state filing through to accepting your first card payment. Millions of US companies are owned by people who have never crossed the border.
The longer answer is worth reading, because "possible remotely" and "straightforward remotely" are not the same thing. Each step has a remote path, and each remote path has a specific requirement you need to satisfy. Knowing them in advance is the difference between four weeks and four months.
What the law actually requires
No US state imposes a citizenship or residency requirement on LLC members. There is no visa test, no minimum time in the country, no requirement that any owner hold a Social Security Number. The forms do not ask about immigration status because immigration status is not relevant to owning a company.
What every state does require is a registered agent with a physical street address inside that state, available during business hours. That is the one physical presence the law insists on — and it is satisfied by a paid service, not by you.
It is worth separating two things that get conflated. Owning a US company and being allowed to work in the United States are unrelated. An LLC gives you the first and none of the second. If you fly to the US and perform work for your own company there, you may create both an immigration question and a tax question. Owning the company from abroad creates neither.
The narrow exceptions
Two situations occasionally involve travel, and neither applies to a standard remote business.
The first is an ITIN application. One route to obtaining an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number is to appear in person at an IRS Taxpayer Assistance Centre. It is one option among three, and the other two do not require travel. More importantly, most foreign-owned LLCs never need an ITIN at all.
The second is traditional branch banking. Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo generally want the account signatory physically present. This is a bank policy rather than a legal requirement, and it is why non-resident founders use fintech accounts instead.
Step one: choosing a state, remotely
Nothing about state selection involves presence. You are choosing between fee structures and annual obligations, and you can do it from a browser.
For an online business run from abroad, the realistic choice is Wyoming, New Mexico or Delaware. New Mexico is cheapest to maintain with no annual report. Wyoming is the balanced default, well recognised by banks. Delaware costs $300 a year in franchise tax and earns that only if you plan to raise from US investors.
The state does not change your federal tax position. It changes your fees and your filing calendar. That point is worth internalising early, because a great deal of marketing implies otherwise.
One genuine consideration that does interact with presence: if your business will have a physical footprint in a particular US state — an office, staff, inventory in a warehouse — you will likely need to register there as well. For a purely remote business this does not arise.
Step two: the registered agent
This is the step that makes the rest of it remote. The agent is your company's official address in the formation state: they receive legal documents and state correspondence on the company's behalf and forward them to you.
You appoint one online, pay $50 to $150 a year, and the requirement is met. You never meet them and never visit their office.
What matters when choosing is not price but forwarding speed. Documents arriving at that address carry deadlines — a lawsuit served there starts a clock whether or not you know about it. Ask how quickly service of process is passed on, and confirm they scan and email rather than posting physical mail to another continent.
Check the renewal price as well as the first-year price. Introductory rates that triple on renewal are common enough to be worth a minute of reading.
Step three: filing the company
Every state accepts online filings. You complete a short form with the company name, the registered agent, and an organiser, pay by card, and wait one to five business days.
Two details catch people out remotely. The first is name availability — search the state register before filing, and remember that availability there is not trademark clearance. The second is payment: some state portals reject cards with non-US billing addresses, which is an irritating way to discover a problem. If your card fails, a formation service filing on your behalf is the usual workaround.
When approved you receive a stamped Certificate of Formation as a PDF. Save it somewhere you will find it again, because every subsequent step asks for it.
Step four: the EIN, which is where the waiting lives
The EIN is your company's federal tax identifier, and nothing financial happens without it. No bank account, no Stripe, no PayPal Business.
US residents obtain one online in about fifteen minutes. That route requires the responsible party to enter a Social Security Number or ITIN, and the system validates it in real time. Without either, the online application stops you, and there is no non-resident version of it.
The remote path is Form SS-4, submitted by fax or by post. Fax is materially faster — commonly two to six weeks against six to ten by post — and gives you a transmission receipt, which is worth having when you are chasing a number that has not arrived. You do not need a fax machine; an online fax service costs a few dollars.
The single most common failure is line 7b. It asks for the responsible party's SSN, ITIN or EIN. You have none of them, and the correct entry is the word Foreign. Not blank, not zeros, not your national identity number. Anything else is treated as invalid and the application comes back weeks later, at which point you start again.
A second detail: the address you give is where a posted EIN letter will land. If that address is your registered agent, confirm they will forward it. An EIN letter sitting unread in an office in Cheyenne is the same as no EIN letter.
Use the waiting time
The EIN wait is dead time only if you let it be. While it processes you can finish the operating agreement, assemble your banking documents, and — most usefully — finish your website. Payment processors will review that website in detail, and a half-built site is the most common reason for a rejection you then have to appeal.
Step five: the operating agreement
Most states do not require one. Write it anyway, even as the sole owner.
It states who owns the company, who may sign for it, and how money moves between the company and you. Banks and processors ask for it during onboarding, and it evidences that the company is genuinely separate from you personally — which is the entire basis of the liability protection an LLC provides.
For a single member it is a short document. Identity and formation details, your 100% membership interest, your initial capital contribution, a statement that you may bind the company, how distributions work, the default tax treatment, and what happens if you die or sell. Template padding about voting procedures and deadlock between members serves no purpose when there is one of you.
Sign it and date it. No state requires notarisation, though some banks like to see it.
Step six: banking, remotely
This is where the process becomes a judgement call rather than an administrative one. Someone reviews your file and decides.
The providers that onboard non-residents remotely are the fintech business accounts. Mercury suits a company banking mainly in US dollars and is common among software and agency businesses. Wise Business suits a company receiving several currencies. Payoneer serves marketplace payouts.
Have everything ready before you start, because applications that stall halfway while you hunt for a document tend to be reviewed less favourably than ones completed in a sitting:
- The stamped Certificate of Formation.
- The EIN confirmation letter from the IRS, not a screenshot of the number.
- A signed operating agreement.
- A clear passport scan, in date.
- Proof of your home address, usually dated within three months.
- A working company website.
The website matters more than founders expect. Reviewers open it. A domain showing a parked page, placeholder text or no pricing is a genuine reason for decline, because the reviewer cannot assess a business they cannot see.
They will also ask what the business does, where your customers are, and how much money will move. Answer specifically. "Consulting services" is weak. "Monthly retainer web development for small e-commerce brands in the US and Canada, five clients, invoiced $2,000 to $5,000 each, paid by bank transfer and card" is strong, because it is checkable against your website.
Inconsistency between what you say and what your site shows is the most common cause of decline we see — not nationality.
Step seven: getting paid
With US account details in place, Stripe and similar processors become available. Approval is again a review rather than a formality, and it is largely a review of your website.
They look for a clear description of what you sell, visible pricing, contact details, terms of service, a privacy policy, and a refund or cancellation policy. Missing terms and refunds is the most common gap and the easiest to close. They also check that your stated business matches the site, for the same reason banks do.
Set your statement descriptor to something your customers will recognise on a card statement. An unrecognisable descriptor is a leading cause of chargebacks, and chargebacks are what put accounts at risk.
If your category sits in restricted territory — finance, supplements, gambling, adult content, most crypto — expect scrutiny or refusal, and look at merchant-of-record platforms instead.
What ongoing operation looks like from abroad
Running the company remotely is less work than forming it, but it is not zero. Four recurring obligations:
- The state annual report and fee, on your state's schedule. Missing it repeatedly leads to administrative dissolution.
- Form 5472 with a pro-forma 1120, generally by 15 April, if the LLC is foreign-owned and had reportable transactions. Money you put in counts, so most first-year companies have a filing obligation even with no revenue. The penalty starts at $25,000.
- Registered agent renewal, annually.
- Bookkeeping — specifically, a log of every transfer between you and the company, which is exactly what the April filing asks for.
None of this requires presence. All of it requires attention, and the calendar entries are worth setting on the day the company is approved rather than the day something is overdue.
A realistic timeline
| Step | Typical duration | Needs travel |
|---|---|---|
| Choosing a state | An afternoon | No |
| Appointing a registered agent | Same day | No |
| State filing | 1–5 business days | No |
| EIN by fax | 2–6 weeks | No |
| Operating agreement | Same day | No |
| Bank account | 2–10 business days after the EIN | No |
| Payment processor | 1–5 business days after banking | No |
Four to eight weeks end to end, with the EIN accounting for most of it. Anyone advertising a fully operational company with banking inside 48 hours is describing the state filing and nothing beyond it.
What actually goes wrong remotely
- Line 7b of the SS-4. Weeks lost to a single field that should say "Foreign".
- An address nobody collects post from. If the EIN letter is posted and never read, you are back in a phone queue.
- Applying for banking with an unfinished website. The reviewer opens it. Finish it first.
- A card the state portal rejects. Annoying, and easily solved by having a service file for you.
- Assuming no tax owed means nothing to file. Form 5472 penalties do not care that your profit was zero.
- Treating the business account as a personal one. It undermines the separation the company exists to provide.
So: can you do it without visiting?
Yes, completely. The obstacles are not geographic. They are procedural — a form field, a document you did not have ready, a website that was not finished when someone looked at it.
Each of those is knowable in advance, which is the entire argument for reading about the process before starting it rather than discovering the requirements one rejection at a time.
If you would rather not run the sequence yourself, our formation service handles the filing, the registered agent, the EIN application and the banking preparation as one process. And if you want the full step-by-step, how to open a US LLC from outside the United States covers each stage in order, with what it actually costs alongside it.