How to Start a US LLC From Colombia

The manual step shows up if you route money to your LLC through a personal offshore account instead of directly through a Colombian bank's foreign exchange market — for example, first parking funds in a personal US or other foreign account and moving them to Mercury from there. Colombia classifies a foreign-held account used this way as a 'clearing account' (cuenta de compensación), and residents holding one must register it with Banco de la República and report its ongoing activity to both Banrep and DIAN, under a reporting framework tightened by DIAN Resolution 000204 of 2025. None of this makes the offshore-account route illegal, but it converts a one-time automatic registration into an ongoing reporting relationship you have to maintain — worth knowing before choosing how to route the initial capital into the LLC, since the simpler path, a direct wire from a Colombian bank, avoids this obligation entirely.

Putting it together: form the LLC (Wyoming and Delaware remain the two most common choices), get the EIN using the international applicant line above, fund the LLC through an authorized Colombian bank or FX intermediary rather than a personal offshore account to keep the Banco de la República registration automatic, open a Mercury or Relay account, and talk to a Colombian accountant early about whether your LLC's income counts as active or passive under the ECE rules and whether your total net wealth, including the LLC's value, is anywhere near the patrimonio threshold. None of these individual pieces are unusual on their own — the combination of a jurisdiction-blind CFC test, a wealth tax that counts foreign holdings, and a channel-dependent registration rule is what makes a Colombian founder's checklist different from a founder anywhere else's.

Colombia's remote-work, SaaS, and e-commerce founder scene has grown fast enough that DIAN and Banco de la República have had to catch up with rules nobody wrote with a solo founder's Wyoming LLC in mind. For these founders, a US LLC solves the practical problems a Colombian SAS often can't from the outside: direct Stripe and PayPal access as a US entity, USD invoicing that skips peso volatility, and a formation process that's faster and cheaper than most cross-border holding structures Colombian founders have used to reach US clients. What most guides miss is that Colombia's rules for a foreign-owned company like this don't hinge on the company being incorporated in a 'tax haven' the way many countries' rules do — Colombia's controlled-foreign-entity regime applies based on how much of the company you own, not where it's located, which means a plain US LLC gets pulled into the same reporting framework a blacklisted-jurisdiction entity would.

Separate from the ECE question, Colombia imposes an annual wealth tax (impuesto al patrimonio) on a resident's net worldwide wealth above 72,000 UVT — a tax-value-unit threshold that adjusts each year and translates to roughly the high six figures in USD terms. Critically, 'worldwide' means worldwide: the value of a Colombian resident's US LLC counts toward this threshold the same way a house, a car, or a Colombian brokerage account would. For a founder whose LLC is genuinely small, this rarely bites — but for a founder whose LLC has accumulated significant retained earnings, real estate, or equipment on its balance sheet, the LLC's valuation can push total net wealth over the threshold even when Colombian assets alone wouldn't. This is a tax most other countries in this series don't have, and it applies independently of whether the LLC's income was taxed under the ECE rules above.

Getting an EIN as a Colombian founder follows the same process as any other non-US resident. Without a US Social Security Number or ITIN, you can't use the IRS's online EIN application — you'll file Form SS-4 and either call the IRS's international applicant line (267-941-1099, staffed 6am-11pm ET, for international applicants only) to receive the EIN over the phone, or fax the SS-4 (855-215-1627 from within the US, 304-707-9471 from outside) for a roughly 4-business-day official turnaround that often takes 1-2 weeks in practice. Mailing to Cincinnati, OH takes 4-5 weeks and should be a last resort. On Line 7b, write 'Foreign' or 'N/A' rather than leaving it blank. The responsible party listed must be the actual Colombian owner, not EasyBrise or any formation agent. If you lose your CP 575 confirmation notice, request Form 147C — a letter, not a duplicate — instead. Don't skip Form 5472 plus a pro forma 1120 each year; the penalty for missing it starts at $25,000.

Unlike Mexico, Chile, or several other countries in this series, Colombia has no comprehensive income tax treaty with the United States — its double-tax-treaty network covers Canada, Mexico, Chile, Spain, Portugal, India, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, South Korea, the UK, France, Italy, and the Andean Community, but not the US. Without a treaty, double taxation relief relies on Colombia's unilateral foreign tax credit mechanism, the 'tax discount' available to Colombian residents for taxes actually paid abroad, rather than treaty-based rules. In practice, this matters less than it sounds for a typical single-member LLC: a non-resident-alien-owned LLC earning non-US-source income usually owes $0 US federal tax in the first place, which means there's rarely a foreign tax to credit against Colombian tax on that income regardless of whether a treaty exists.

On the banking side, Colombia is not on Mercury's or Relay's prohibited-country list, and Colombian founders go through the same standard non-resident application process as any other country covered in this series — no separate track, no extra document beyond the usual passport, LLC formation documents, and EIN. The genuine friction for Colombian founders sits upstream of the bank application, in the ECE classification and Banco de la República registration questions above, not in getting Mercury or Relay to approve the account itself. Once approved, moving USD revenue between the LLC's Mercury account and personal use in Colombia is a separate transaction from the initial capitalization discussed above, and follows ordinary income, not investment, reporting once it reaches you personally.

Colombia's ECE (Entidades Controladas del Exterior) regime, enacted under Law 1819 of 2016, defines a controlled foreign entity as any non-Colombian-resident entity in which a Colombian tax resident holds 10% or more of the capital or voting rights, directly or indirectly — full stop, regardless of what country the entity is incorporated in. This is different from the low-tax-jurisdiction gate that countries like China, Taiwan, and Iceland use, where only entities in specifically low-tax countries get pulled into CFC scope. A single-member US LLC, where the Colombian founder owns 100%, clears the 10% threshold by an enormous margin the moment the LLC exists — there's no jurisdiction test to pass or fail here, because the ECE label attaches automatically based on ownership percentage alone, and the US isn't exempted just because it isn't a blacklisted tax haven.

The good news is what happens next depends heavily on the type of income. Colombian ECE rules only require current attribution — taxing the Colombian owner on the entity's income each year, whether or not it's distributed — for passive income: dividends, interest, royalties, and similar. Income considered active, meaning it comes from real economic activity actually carried out in the jurisdiction where the entity is based, generally escapes this annual attribution requirement. For a typical EasyBrise-style LLC running an active SaaS product, e-commerce store, or consulting practice with real operations behind it, that income usually qualifies as active rather than passive, keeping it outside the ECE regime's current-taxation trigger. This doesn't eliminate the LLC's ECE status or the disclosure obligations that come with it — it just means the annual profit doesn't get taxed to the Colombian owner as it's earned the way passive investment income would. Founders whose LLC holds significant royalty, licensing, or investment income should get this classification reviewed specifically, since that's where the active/passive line actually gets tested.

On the funding side, Colombia doesn't impose a hard dollar cap on how much you can invest abroad the way India's $250,000 LRS limit or China's $50,000 quota do — but it does require the investment to be registered with Banco de la República, Colombia's central bank. The good news: if you fund your LLC by wiring money through an authorized Colombian bank or foreign exchange intermediary, that registration happens automatically the moment the transfer is processed and the required exchange declaration (Form 4) is filed — no separate application, no waiting for approval. This 'no cap, automatic registration' structure is a genuinely more liberal starting point than several other countries covered in this series, provided you fund the LLC through the correct channel from the start. The requirement only becomes a manual, proactive step if you fund the LLC some other way, covered next.