How to Get an EIN for Your LLC for Free (Don’t Pay $200)

Let me start with the most important sentence in this article: getting an EIN from the IRS is free. Completely free. Zero dollars. If a website is charging you money specifically to “get your EIN,” you are being ripped off, full stop.

When attorneys (mine included) form a company for a client, we often obtain the EIN as part of the overall engagement, just to take it off your plate along with everything else. That’s a package of legal services. What I’m warning you about is different: standalone websites, many of them dressed up with eagles and flags to look vaguely governmental, that charge $75, $150, or $200 (and many of them sign you up for scammy subscriptions and shady services, too!) to type your answers into the same free IRS application you’re about to see. In the video above I do the whole thing on screen. Here’s the written version, with some extra detail the video didn’t have room for.

An EIN (Employer Identification Number, sometimes called a FEIN — the “F” is for Federal if you were wondering; which is redundant as all EINs are federal) is a nine-digit federal tax identification number. Think of it as a Social Security number for your business. Despite the word “Employer” in the name, you don’t need employees to have or need one.

As a practical matter, nearly every LLC, partnership or corporation ends up getting an EIN, including single-member LLCs that are disregarded for federal income tax purposes, for one simple reason: your bank will require it to open a business account. Using an EIN instead of your personal Social Security number on business paperwork like W-9s is also a small (but real) privacy win.

Before you click anything, gather your entity documents: your certificate of formation, your operating agreement (or bylaws, or partnership agreement), and your minutes if you have them. Have them physically ready and accessible.

Here’s why I’m insistent about this. The IRS online application expires after 15 minutes of inactivity, and it cannot be saved and resumed. You have to finish in one session. If you wander off mid-application to hunt for your certificate of formation, you may come back to a timed-out screen and start over from scratch. So — everything on the desk first, then start.

While you’re gathering documents, one more piece of information to have ready: the Social Security number of your responsible party. The IRS requires the application to identify a responsible party, which for a small business means the individual who ultimately owns or controls the entity, and for online applications that person’s SSN (or ITIN) goes on the form. The IRS also currently limits you to one EIN per responsible party per day, which almost never matters for a small business owner but occasionally surprises people setting up multi-entity structures in a single day.

Search for “IRS EIN application.” Now, before you click, look at the results with a little bit of suspicion. The top of the page will often include sponsored results from private companies that will at best charge you a lot of money to do something free, or at worst be borderline-scams. Skip them all. Skip anything that isn’t irs.gov. Read the actual URL, not the logo, because the paid sites are often deliberately designed to confuse you and look official.

The page you want is the IRS’s online EIN Assistant on irs.gov. On that page, read the “how it works” material, note the one-session and 15-minute-timeout warnings you’ve already heard from me, and click through to begin the application. One more logistical note: the online assistant is only available during certain hours (roughly business hours on weekdays, Eastern time — check the IRS site for the current window), so this is not a 2:00 AM task.

The application is essentially a guided interview. Here’s how it goes for a typical LLC, following the same path I take in the video.

Legal structure. Select what your entity is. Choices are: LLC, corporation, partnership, and so on.

Member count and state. For an LLC, it asks how many members and which state the LLC is in. For example: a single-member Texas LLC answers one member and Texas. The member count matters because it drives your default federal tax classification: single-member LLCs are disregarded by default, multi-member LLCs are partnerships by default. (Electing corporate or S corporation treatment happens on separate forms later, Form 8832 or Form 2553; the EIN application isn’t where that decision gets made — and it’s a decision to make with your CPA or lawyer, not on vibes.)

Reason for applying. Select the one that fits best. There are many different options (banking purposes, hired employees, started a new entity, and so on).

Responsible party. Enter the responsible party’s name and SSN. For a single-member LLC, that’s you, the owner. For a multi-member LLC, pick one person; the IRS wants the individual who controls or owns the entity. You’ll also confirm your capacity, and here’s a compliance point worth taking seriously: you only check the box saying you’re an owner, member, or managing member if that is actually true. If you’re a third party applying on someone’s behalf, the application handles that differently and there’s separate third-party designee paperwork. Don’t casually misstate your role on a federal form.

Addresses. The LLC’s physical location, plus a phone number. If your mailing address differs from the physical address, say so and a separate mailing address section appears.

Entity details. The legal name of the LLC, which must match your articles of organization (in Texas, your certificate of formation). This is exactly why I told you to have that document on the desk. You’ll also enter the county and state where the LLC is located, the state where the articles are filed (which can differ; a Delaware LLC operating in Texas answers these two questions differently), and the LLC’s start date.

A quick formatting warning from painful experience: the IRS form fields are picky. They’ll reject commas and certain punctuation in name fields, and obviously nonsensical dates. If the page throws a validation error, don’t panic; fix the offending character and continue.

Business activity questions. The application asks whether the entity does a handful of specific things (certain vehicle, gambling, alcohol/tobacco/firearms, and excise-tax-related activities). Above all, be truthful. If one of these does apply to you, answering yes isn’t the kiss of death; it just means additional forms in your future. Then pick your industry category and describe what the business does. If nothing fits, “other” opens up more choices.

Review and submit. Two things here, and they’re the two most important clicks in the whole application.

First, choose to receive your EIN confirmation letter digitally rather than by mail. The letter (the IRS calls it a CP 575) arrives immediately as a PDF if you take the digital option; by mail it can take a month.

Second, actually review your answers before submitting. Every field. Fixing a typo now takes ten seconds; fixing it after submission means dealing with the IRS by correspondence.

Then submit, and your EIN is issued on the spot.

I say this in the video and I’ll repeat it here: once you have the CP 575 letter, make copies. Print one for the entity’s records, save a PDF on your computer, take a picture with your phone, email a copy to your dad, tape one to your best friend’s refrigerator.

I’m exaggerating only slightly. Here’s why. The IRS issues the CP 575 exactly once. If you lose it, you can’t get the same letter again; you have to call the IRS Business & Specialty Tax Line, verify your identity, and request a replacement verification letter (the 147-C), which involves the kind of hold music that changes a person. Banks, payroll providers, and state agencies will ask for proof of your EIN for the life of the business. Thirty seconds of making backups now saves you that entire experience.

The EIN is free, the application is easy, and the whole thing takes about ten minutes if your paperwork is ready. Don’t pay a lookalike website for it. Have your formation documents on the desk before you start, get the responsible party details right, take the digital letter, and back it up like it matters, because it does.