Hello everyone,

I need your help to recommend a reliable company that can form the company for me and be trust worthy as well. Which bank is easier and faster to open with wiser or mercury? Your help is appreciated!

Hi all, I realize this may have been asked before but did not find any recent answers.

My question is: can/should I operate under one LLC if I want to provide a service (e.g. dog training) and sell goods (e.g. dog collars & harnesses) under one LLC (with a neutral name, e.g. “A Dog’s Life LLC”)?

The revenue would be small enough that creating two separate LLC’s wouldn’t make a lot of sense IMO. But would I need to keep track of separate expenses (eg separate materials for goods sold and hours or expenses related to training), and create two separate bank accounts?

Or can I, as long as I operate under one LLC name, just keep everything combined in one place without major drawbacks?

Thanks in advance!!!

Unsure best way to sell a former work vehicle.

I formed an LLC and purchased a work vehicle under the LLC name. Business went south and we decided to dissolve LLC and vehicle sat there for a year. Now I need to sell it but when a private individual buys it, how do I transfer title legally since LLC no longer exists?

Do I first try to get LLC vehicle put in my personal name? Or…?

I've been trying to apply for an EIN for my newly formed LLC, but I keep getting an error on the IRS website and can't complete the application. I've tried multiple times with no luck.

Is anyone else experiencing the same issue? If so, were you able to get around it?

Also, is there another way to get an EIN besides mailing Form SS-4? I'd really like to avoid mailing it since I've heard it can take several weeks to process.

Any advice or recent experiences would be appreciated. Thanks!

I don't think I would ever ask my first client to sign a contract, at least not until I can risk losing them. They seem very word of mouth type and I feel as though a contract would offend them.

However, I'd still like to have a standard contract for all new clients going forward. Do I tell the lawyer who I'm gonna hire to write this contract that I have a word of mouth client? I fear as though they might try to contact my first client and try to work with them to extract money out of me. Is this likely to happen or am I being way too paranoid?

I have been applying for bank account at Mercury and it is so pathetic. First of all they are so slow, 2nd of all, they keep asking me same questions, I have been answering still same things on and on.

1. The thing is that IRS has typo in my co name (m yet to receive official letter, so not sure the typo is in co name or just fax letter, also I have been trying and calling IRS, they just literally don’t connect )
2. I just have launched my new business so I don’t have any payment records from last 90 days or so. I selected I don’t have this document, and mentioned whole thing, yet again same query. Though I shared an invoice of my freelancing at first which is on my name.
3. I have submitted my passport docu a clear picture, now again 3rd time they asking me same questions

CAN ANYONE PLEASE SUGGEST ME BETTER OPTION?
My business is into creative marketing agency and e comm.

I'm going to preface this with the fact that I should have done my own research and I should have just filed directly with the state. The reason I didn't is because I wanted to save time. I'm incredibly busy getting my business ready to launch, and although I know I could figure out all the details of what I need to do to file, I simply did not want to.

This is why I decided to file with Bizee. For $350 they would handle all the filing for me and even file for my EIN. Not only that, they would have everything processed within 2 business days. To their credit, this process was incredibly easy, and within 24 hours I had an LLC with an EIN, Registered Agent, and Virtual Address.

Now for the frustrating part. As soon as I logged in this morning to take a look at my new LLC details, I was immediately prompted with a required filing for a Statement of Information. Yes, if I had done my research I would have known what this was and that it was required within 90 days of forming an LLC. However, I didn't, because I trusted Bizee as an advisor to inform me of what was needed and what was and wasn't included in the initial formation fees. Why is this so frustrating? It's frustrating because Bizee charges $134 (+$20 state fee) to file a Statement of Information. This fee seems astronomical to me given everything that was included in the initial filing for $350. It truly feels like I'm being scammed. I'm now in the position of figuring out whether I just give in and pay the fee or learn from my initial mistake and figure out how to file this on my own.

I’ve faxed my SS-4 over the the IRS twice now since May and both times I’ve received a fax back saying my request has been resolved and that they sent over 3 pages but their fax only contains 2 pages.

Anyone else having this issue? I’ve also tried calling and the one time I’ve gotten through, the IRS agent had no idea how to deal with the request and said that SR numbers couldn’t be queried and recommended I resend.

But now I’ve just gotten the same document back now with a missing attachment….

location illinois

1. What's a good company to go with?
2. What do I need to look out for?
3. What's the bare minimum that the insurance must legally do?
4. Any other thoughts you have on business insurance in general?

Looking for some information and hopefully won't get judgement. Been tiptoeing into OnlyFan world and using a stage name but was told I can turn my content into a business. Not sure if I have to just trademark my handle name and I'm set but then I read something about LLC but really don't even know what that is. Also not sure if anyone knows about insurance to insure a body part like some actors do. Should I do that also?

i've been building my saas over the last year, completely bootstrapped from outside the us. like a lot of international founders on here, my goal was simple: get a working us payment rail through stripe and a business bank account set up so i could actually start collecting revenue.

but as an analyst by trade, i wanted to map out the actual downstream timeline before pulling the trigger. i almost made a few massive, twenty five thousand dollar mistakes because standard "just use delaware" advice completely glosses over the post-incorporation operational reality.

if you are a non-us resident trying to go from "i built something" to "i can legally accept payments," here is the exact operational sequence and the hidden costs i had to figure out the hard way.

1. cost (DE vs WY)

the default advice is always "just drop it in delaware." but when i ran the numbers for a solo, bootstrapped team not raising institutional capital, delaware felt like a trap.

delaware c-corps carry franchise taxes and registered agent fees that scale up quickly, starting around three hundred dollars a year minimum. i shifted my strategy to a wyoming llc because it costs roughly sixty dollars a year to stay compliant with the secretary of state, and it keeps my personal name off public filings.

2. form 5472 and what not

this is the line item that almost every standard formation service finishes their job before reaching. because i am a non-resident running a single-member us llc, the irs requires an annual information return called form 5472 to disclose any transactions between me and the entity.

If you miss it, the automated penalty is a flat twenty five thousand dollars. i figured that i couldn't just use a basic, hands-off platform. i explicitly needed a managed compliance setup, similar to how specialized platforms like doola, first base and smaller team like mizu bundle the annual form 5472 processing with a fee, to make sure i don't get wiped out by an irs automated letter in year two. But things can get pricey here so it depends on the budget & how much you'd want to handle it by yourself

3. the non-us ein bottleneck

because i don't have a us social security number, getting my employer identification number is a massive friction point. the applications go via fax or mail and take anywhere from four to eight weeks because the irs strictly limits processing to one ein per responsible party per business day across all methods.

4. banking realities in 2026

i’ve been tracking fintech approvals, and platforms like mercury have drastically tightened reviews on non-resident applications recently. rushing a banking application with an "ein pending" placeholder is a fast track to an automated kyc rejection.

the strategy i'm moving forward with requires strict patience: filing the wyoming registry, waiting the full month for the physical irs ein confirmation letter to arrive in hand, and only then submitting pristine documentation to the bank.

my questions for other solo international founders who have done this recently:

• for those running single-member llcs, are you handling your form 5472 manually with an external cpa, or using an integrated platform to track it?
• did anyone try to rush their banking setup before their physical ein letter arrived, and did it cause permanent issues with compliance filters?
• Any compliance git repo / skills recommended? or tools?

i’m trying to keep my operational head above water while keeping overhead low. i would love to hear how you structured your sequence

I have a Texas LLC, but I’m currently based in the Middle East. I’m looking for a reliable U.S. phone number mainly to set up and use WhatsApp Business for my company.

I’ve seen a lot of virtual number apps, but many of them say they may not work with WhatsApp verification. I don’t want to waste money on a number that gets rejected.

Has anyone used a U.S. number for WhatsApp Business while living outside the U.S.? What’s the most reliable option?

Imagine it's a software consulting company and you need a contract that you can give to all new clients to sign. You could pay maybe around $1k-$2k to have a lawyer make one, but instead you could take a gamble and have AI do it. What would you do in this scenario? Doing it via AI is basically free (assuming you just use the free stuff). You could also just google some freelancer contract templates.

What type of risk would you take here?

I'm a non-US citizen who owns a US single-member LLC (disregarded entity) running a small online B2B consulting business. All the work is performed from outside the US, so as I understand it the LLC owes no US income tax (foreign-source services income).

What I did not know until recently is that the LLC still had to file Form 5472 with a pro-forma 1120 every single year — and I never filed any of them.

So I'm now behind on [3] years of these forms — [2023, 2024, and 2025] (every year the LLC has been active). No income tax due for any of them; it's purely the unfiled information returns that I owe.

Two reasons I was completely in the dark: I had no idea the form existed (no US tax background, no advisor at the time), and my registered agent resigned in 2024 without ever telling me — so any IRS notice had a dead address to go to and I never saw a thing. No contact from the IRS yet that I'm aware of.

I'm now pulling together all the delinquent years and planning to file them with reasonable-cause statements before the IRS reaches out. Before I send anything, I'd really like to hear from people who've actually done this:

• Did you get the $25k/year penalty waived? Reasonable cause, first-time abatement, or the Delinquent International Information Return Submission Procedures?
• Did the IRS waive it based on the RC statement attached to the late filing, or did they assess the penalty first and you had to fight it afterward?
• How long did it take to hear back?
• For multiple delinquent years filed at once — did they treat them together, or year by year?
• Anything you'd add to (or leave out of) the reasonable-cause letter, looking back?

Just trying to do this right. Any real experiences are hugely appreciated.