Foreign-owned US company — filings: do I need an adviser, or can I do it alone?
Some of it, yes — and we will say so on the call if that is the honest answer. The parts that are worth paying for are the ones where a missed election, a missed deadline or an unverified threshold costs more than the fee: a foreign-owned single-member limited liability company is inside that reporting even while it is invisible for US income tax.
What if I have already filed and got it wrong?
That is a common starting point. We re-derive the position, identify whether an amendment or a disclosure route is the right vehicle, and tell you which one preserves the relief that is still available. The order matters more than the speed.
How long will it take?
It depends on the documents rather than on us. Once the pack is complete most filings turn around inside a fortnight; anything that needs a certificate from a tax authority runs on that authority's timetable, which we tell you at the start rather than at the end.
Does my US company have to file if it earned nothing?
Very probably. The heaviest obligation on a foreign-owned US company is informational rather than financial: the reporting of transactions with its foreign owner and other related parties is due because of the ownership, not because of income. A year with no trade can still contain reportable transactions — money put in by the owner, money taken out, expenses the owner paid on the company's behalf, amounts booked to an intercompany account. The penalty attaches to the form rather than to any tax, so a nil year that is simply skipped is one of the more expensive mistakes in this area.
I am the only owner and not American — what do I actually file?
Ownership is what decides your annual set, so start from the ownership rather than from the activity. A single foreign owner puts the company inside the related-party reporting regime. On top of that sit the entity's own federal position, registration in the state where it is formed or doing business, and, where profits are paid out of the country, the withholding question. These are separate systems with separate deadlines and separate consequences, and satisfying one says nothing about the others. Map the whole set once, in writing, and then run it annually rather than rediscovering it each spring.
My LLC is disregarded for tax — does that mean no filings?
No, and this is the single most common misunderstanding here. A foreign-owned single-member limited liability company can be invisible for US income tax purposes and still be squarely inside the related-party reporting rules. Being disregarded answers the question of whose income it is. It does not answer the question of what has to be reported. Owners frequently conclude, reasonably enough, that an entity with no separate income has nothing to file, and the reporting obligation runs on unnoticed for years. Treat the two questions as unconnected, because that is how they are written.
Do I need to register in the state as well as file federally?
They are separate obligations from separate authorities. Forming the entity in one state and operating it in another can bring registration and an annual state requirement in both, and those requirements follow their own calendar rather than the federal one. State obligations tend to be small individually and easy to let lapse, which matters mostly when the company later wants to sell, borrow or open an account and has to show it is in good standing. Confirm where the entity is formed, where it is actually doing business, and what each of those places wants annually.
What counts as a related-party transaction for a one-owner company?
Broader than most owners expect. It is not confined to sales and purchases. Capital put into the company, amounts drawn out, loans in either direction, interest booked on them, rent, service charges, and costs the owner or another group company paid on the entity's behalf are all transactions between related parties. Because a single-owner company often has no third-party trade at all, nearly everything in its ledger is reportable. The practical task is usually to go through the intercompany or owner's account and give each movement a description, rather than to hunt for transactions elsewhere.
We sent profits back to the overseas owner — is anything withheld?
Moving profits out of the country raises a withholding question that is separate from the entity's own filings and from the information reporting. The answer depends on what the payment is — a distribution of profit, interest on a shareholder loan, a fee for services, or a repayment of capital — and on what treaty relief, if any, is available to the recipient and how it is claimed. The character of the payment is decided by the arrangement behind it, so the time to settle it is before the money moves, not when the bookkeeper has to post it.
Do Canada and the United States share tax information?
Yes, through more than one channel. The treaty has an exchange-of-information article that supports both routine and on-request exchange. Separately, an intergovernmental agreement has Canadian financial institutions identify US-reportable accounts and report them to the CRA, which passes them to the IRS, with the reverse flow for Canadian residents. Most other country pairs use the Common Reporting Standard for the same purpose. See FATCA reporting.
How does cross-border tax planning work?
It starts with facts rather than structures: which countries have a claim on you, what each one taxes, and where the two overlap. From there the decisions are about order and timing — which country taxes first, where relief is claimed, and whether a filing or a certificate has to be in place before money moves rather than after. Most of the value is in the sequencing, because relief claimed late is usually relief recovered slowly. See international tax planning.
