My LLC has two foreign members and is taxed as a partnership — is it still FIRPTA when it sells?

The clean disregarded-entity look-through stops once the LLC is classified as a partnership rather than disregarded. A single-member disregarded LLC is ignored, so the buyer withholds on the foreign owner under section 1445. A multi-member LLC taxed as a partnership is a separate entity for tax, and a different set of rules governs how the foreign owners' share of US real estate gain is collected.

The Form 8288 instructions point the way: a domestic partnership that disposes of a US real property interest generally withholds under section 1446(a), not section 1445(e)(1). Section 1446 is the partnership effectively-connected-income withholding regime — the partnership computes and remits withholding on the foreign partners' allocable share of effectively connected gain, including the USRPI gain that section 897 treats as effectively connected. So your US-formed partnership's sale is most likely a section 1446 question, run at the partnership level, rather than the buyer-side section 1445 withholding a disregarded LLC would face.

Because the regime turns on entity classification, confirm how the LLC is actually treated for federal tax before the deal closes — a two-member LLC that never elected corporate treatment is a partnership by default, while an LLC that filed an entity-classification election may be a corporation. Getting this wrong means withholding on the wrong rail, under the wrong section, by the wrong party, and the buyer-side versus partnership-side exposure does not fall on the same person. Entity-level withholding regimes and the special rules under section 1445(e) and section 1446 can interact in ways that deserve a closer look from a professional. And if any sale is on deferred terms, the installment analysis in /guides/installment-sale-foreign-sellers still applies to the underlying gain, even though the collecting party and the governing section differ from the disregarded-LLC case.