EIN for French LLC Owners: The Court Ruling That Just Overturned a Decade of Certainty

There is a genuine tension worth knowing about between this new case law and France's own published administrative guidance. The BOFiP, France's official tax doctrine, states in BOI-INT-DG-20-20-30 (dated August 12, 2015) that foreign partnerships can be recognized as transparent even where their members enjoy limited liability -- a more taxpayer-favorable position than where Carmejane's reasoning could lead in a genuinely hybrid case. French tax procedure includes a specific protection, under Article L80 A of the Livre des procedures fiscales, that generally allows a taxpayer to rely on published administrative doctrine even when it is more favorable than the law or case law would otherwise require, provided the doctrine was in force and applicable to the taxpayer's situation at the relevant time. Whether and how this protection interacts with Carmejane's new case-law hierarchy for a specific LLC is precisely the kind of question that needs a qualified French tax lawyer's analysis rather than a general answer, since it depends on the exact facts and timing involved.

Three things before you apply. First, your LLC needs state approval -- applying before formation is complete is a common, avoidable delay. Second, keep your French passport or carte d'identite accessible in case the IRS requests identity verification during a fax or phone follow-up. Third, settle on a mailing address for the CP 575 confirmation letter -- a French home address works, though many founders use a US virtual mailbox for faster, trackable delivery. Worth documenting from the start, given the Carmejane uncertainty above: the specific features of your LLC's operating agreement -- capital structure, transferability of membership interests, management flexibility -- since these are exactly the indicia a French tax classification analysis would weigh if the question is ever tested.

The application process itself does not vary by country. French founders use the same three non-resident routes as everyone else, since the IRS's online EIN system requires an SSN, ITIN, or US legal residence most applicants do not have. Fax is the most reliable method: complete Form SS-4 and send it to 855-215-1627 if faxing from within the US, or 304-707-9471 from outside -- i.e., from France -- with real-world turnaround commonly running one to two weeks despite the IRS's official four-business-day target. Phone, at 267-941-1099, is open to international applicants Monday through Friday, 6:00 AM to 11:00 PM US Eastern Time; France runs six hours ahead of Eastern depending on daylight saving, leaving a workable window through the French evening. Mail, at four to five weeks, is the slowest option and rarely worth choosing over fax.

A few fields on Form SS-4 consistently cause delays for non-resident applicants generally, French founders included. Line 7b asks for the responsible party's SSN, ITIN, or EIN -- if you have none of these, the IRS's own instructions say to write Foreign or N/A, not leave the field blank, since a blank Line 7b is one of the most common reasons non-resident applications bounce back for correction. Lines 4a-4b need your full French mailing address spelled out with France written in full, since that is where your EIN confirmation letter, Form CP 575, will be mailed if you apply by post. Line 9a asks about entity classification -- accepting the default disregarded-entity status is standard for most single-member LLCs, and as the Carmejane discussion above shows, it is exactly the profile the recent French case law analysis is still working out, so this US-side election is not the last word on how France ultimately treats the entity.

Until very recently, a French tax resident forming a US single-member LLC without electing corporate treatment could plan with real confidence around one settled point: French administrative courts had, over roughly a decade of consistent decisions starting with the Feelware LLC ruling in 2011, treated a non-electing LLC as a transparent partnership under Article 8 of the French tax code, with its profits taxed directly to the member as business income rather than as corporate dividends. That certainty ended on November 12, 2025, when France's highest administrative court, the Conseil d'Etat, issued its decision in the Carmejane LLC case (No. 502894). The ruling reshuffled how the classification test works specifically in situations of what French practitioners call structural hybridity -- where the indicators point in conflicting directions. Under the new hierarchy, the limited liability protection LLC members enjoy is now treated as the preponderant, deciding factor when other indicia conflict, which can push a genuinely hybrid LLC toward opaque, corporate treatment rather than the transparency non-electing LLCs had come to expect. It is worth being precise about the facts of Carmejane itself: the LLC in that case had actually elected to be taxed as a C Corporation for US federal purposes and had a membership-unit capital structure proportional to contributions -- meaningfully different from the plain default disregarded-entity structure most founders in this series are forming. Whether the full weight of this ruling extends to a standard, non-electing single-member LLC with no such distinguishing features is a question French tax lawyers are actively debating as of the most recent commentary, not one settled by the case itself. None of this changes what Form SS-4 asks for, but it is exactly the kind of unsettled, fast-moving legal question worth discussing with a French avocat fiscaliste before assuming the old, comfortable transparency presumption still applies without qualification. Practitioner commentary published in the months following the decision has been unusually direct about the shift, describing the prior near-certainty as having genuinely collapsed rather than merely being refined -- language that signals real professional concern about relying on the old presumption going forward, not just routine legal caution.

Once issued, your EIN arrives with a confirmation letter, Form CP 575, sent by fax, mail, or both depending on your application method -- keep it permanently, since banks and payment processors will ask for it during account opening. A lost CP 575 cannot be reissued, but the IRS will provide an EIN Verification Letter, Form 147C, as a substitute for any future banking or tax need. From here, most French founders move on to opening a US bank account -- Mercury and Relay both work for France-based founders, since France is not on either provider's restricted list -- and, since almost every non-resident-owned single-member LLC counts as a foreign-owned disregarded entity, filing Form 5472 alongside a pro forma Form 1120 annually, regardless of whether the LLC had US activity that year. The $25,000 minimum penalty for missing that filing applies independently of anything French tax authorities separately require.

If a formation service is handling your EIN application, confirm that the responsible party listed on Line 7a is you, the actual owner -- not a staff member at the formation company. The IRS defines the responsible party as whoever ultimately owns or controls the entity's funds and decisions, identified by their real name and passport-based nationality. An EIN record that lists someone other than the actual owner creates a mismatch that can complicate matters later if a bank or payment processor needs to verify beneficial ownership, which is the same information reported separately under BOI/FinCEN rules. If a provider suggests listing anyone but you, treat it as a red flag rather than a convenience, regardless of how routine it sounds.

The practical stakes of this classification question are significant, not academic. If your LLC is treated as transparent, its profits are taxed directly to you as business income under France's progressive rates, with a foreign tax credit mechanism under the treaty for any US tax paid on the same income -- generally minimal for a typical non-resident alien-owned LLC without effectively connected US income. If instead the LLC is treated as opaque, French tax generally applies only when profits are distributed, and those distributions are taxed as dividend income, potentially subject to the flat prelevement forfaitaire unique alongside social contributions -- a materially different regime with a different timing and rate profile. Given that Carmejane is less than a year old at the time of writing and its full scope for a standard non-electing single-member LLC remains actively debated among practitioners, the responsible approach is to document your LLC's actual structure clearly and revisit this specific question with a French avocat fiscaliste rather than assume either classification by default. A founder who documents genuine business substance -- real operating activity, a defensible reason for the LLC structure beyond tax planning, and an operating agreement that leans toward the traditional partnership indicia on the other six factors -- is in a materially stronger position if this question is ever examined than one who has given no thought to it at all.

The classification test French courts built over the past decade weighs seven indicators: the formation formalities involved, the flexibility of the LLC's management structure, the size and nature of its capital, restrictions on transferring membership interests, US fiscal transparency, the entity's treatment under the France-US tax treaty of August 31, 1994, and the limited liability protection members receive. Before Carmejane, the dominant reading was that six of these seven factors typically pointed toward partnership treatment for a standard non-electing single-member LLC, with limited liability standing alone on the corporate side -- and courts had generally held that one dissenting factor was not enough to overcome the other six. Carmejane did not eliminate this test; it changed how the factors are weighted when they genuinely conflict, elevating limited liability from one factor among seven to the deciding one in those hybrid cases. Understanding this framework matters even if your specific LLC ultimately lands on the transparent side, because it shows exactly which features of your operating agreement and capital structure a future audit or court challenge would actually scrutinize.

A few mistakes show up repeatedly. Assuming the decade-old presumption of transparency for non-electing LLCs still applies unqualified, when the Carmejane decision has reshuffled the analysis for cases involving conflicting classification indicators. Assuming Carmejane's holding automatically applies to every single-member LLC, when the case itself involved an LLC with a corporate US election and a proportional membership-unit structure meaningfully different from a plain default disregarded entity. Relying solely on the BOFiP's transparency-favorable doctrine without considering how it interacts with the newer case law and the specific protections under Article L80 A LPF. Treating this as a settled question rather than an actively evolving one worth monitoring, given how recently Carmejane was decided. And, as with every non-resident applicant regardless of country, leaving Line 7b of Form SS-4 blank instead of writing Foreign, which remains one of the most frequent reasons the IRS returns a non-resident application for correction.