How to Start a US LLC From Costa Rica

Costa Rica has no comprehensive income tax treaty with the United States, a gap shared with several other countries covered in this series. In practice, this matters less than it might initially suggest, since Costa Rica's territorial exemption typically means the LLC's foreign-source income isn't taxed in Costa Rica in the first place, leaving nothing for a treaty to relieve on that side, and a non-resident-alien-owned LLC earning non-US-source income usually owes $0 US federal tax to begin with either way.

Putting it together: form the LLC (Wyoming and Delaware remain the two most common choices), get the EIN using the international applicant line above, open a Mercury or Relay account without either restricting Costa Rica, and keep your client base and marketing activity genuinely outside Costa Rica to support the territorial exemption's source test. Between the decades-old territorial system, the total absence of CFC rules, and no treaty complications to navigate, this is one of the more straightforward tax pictures in the series, with the 2026 colón strength being the one live variable worth tracking for anyone converting USD earnings locally.

Costa Rica's reputation as one of Latin America's most stable democracies, paired with a fast-growing remote-work and digital-nomad community, has made it a popular base for founders building SaaS products, e-commerce stores, and consulting practices for US and global clients. For these founders, a US LLC offers direct Stripe and PayPal access as a genuine US entity, and a formation process considerably simpler than establishing a Costa Rican company specifically to serve international clients. What makes Costa Rica's tax story genuinely appealing is that it's had a territorial system in place since 1988, one of the longer-standing territorial regimes in this series, combined with a complete absence of controlled foreign company rules, leaving little for a solo founder's US LLC to trigger. Costa Rica's own digital-nomad visa framework has formally recognized this population too, reinforcing rather than complicating the underlying territorial treatment.

Getting an EIN as a Costa Rican founder works exactly like it does for 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 Costa Rican 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.

On the banking side, Costa Rica is not on Mercury's or Relay's prohibited-country list, and Costa Rican founders go through the same standard non-resident application process, passport, LLC formation documents, and EIN, as founders from most other countries in this series. There's no distinct Costa Rica-specific hurdle at the account-opening stage.

Worth knowing as a current, timely fact rather than received wisdom: the Costa Rican colón isn't pegged to the dollar the way several currencies covered elsewhere in this series are, it floats under a managed regime where the central bank intervenes mainly to smooth volatility, not to hold a fixed rate. Through 2026, the colón has actually strengthened substantially against the dollar, reaching multi-decade highs, driven by strong tourism, export, and foreign-investment dollar inflows into a relatively shallow local currency market. For a founder earning USD through the LLC and periodically converting to colones for local expenses, this is the opposite of the currency-weakness story that shapes several other countries' pages in this series, a stronger colón means each dollar converts to fewer colones than it used to, worth factoring into any budgeting done in local currency terms rather than assuming past exchange rates still hold.

The genuine nuance worth getting right involves how remote work gets classified. Costa Rica's territorial exemption generally treats income from remote work performed for foreign clients as foreign-source, provided there are no local Costa Rican customers and no domestic marketing operations tied to the business. This is a similar caution to Paraguay's source test covered elsewhere in this series: the exemption depends on the underlying facts of where the business's clients and marketing activity actually sit, not simply on where the founder happens to be sitting while they work. A founder whose US LLC serves exclusively non-Costa Rican clients, with no local sales or marketing footprint, sits comfortably within the exemption; a business that starts picking up Costa Rican customers or running local marketing campaigns should get that mix reviewed with an accountant before assuming the exemption still applies to all of it.

Costa Rica has applied a territorial tax system since 1988: only income sourced within Costa Rica is subject to Costa Rican income tax, for both residents and non-residents, individuals and companies alike. Foreign-source income, including profits from a foreign business, foreign dividends, and foreign investment income, is completely exempt from Costa Rican tax regardless of how it's earned or brought into the country. On top of that, Costa Rica has no controlled foreign company regime at all, a status it shares with Panama and Paraguay elsewhere in this series, and no wealth tax or exit tax layered on top either. A Costa Rican resident who owns 100% of a US LLC running an active, foreign-facing business isn't subject to any CFC-style attribution mechanism, active or passive income included, and there's no ownership threshold or effective-tax-rate calculation to worry about the way there is in most European countries covered in this series.