Real Tax Questions, Expert Answers
Get answers to your foreign-owned LLC tax questions from ForeignLLCTax. Every answer includes IRS source citations and step-by-step guidance.
Canada taxed income that the U.S. seems to treat as U.S.-source. Is treaty re-sourcing the reason people use a separate Form 1116 basket?
I am a Canadian founder who became a U.S. resident but still has compensation items that Canada continues to tax. My preparer mentioned 'certain income re-sourced by treaty' and said it may require a ...
I filed Form 2350 expecting to qualify for the FEIE, but my travel pattern changed and now I may fail the test. What happens next?
I am from Australia and spent most of 2025 and 2026 moving between Singapore, Sydney, and California while running my U.S. LLC. I filed Form 2350 because I expected to meet the physical presence test ...
In a dual-status year, do I report foreign salary from before I moved to the U.S., or only income after the residency start date?
I am from Germany and moved to Seattle in August 2025. Before the move I was employed by a German company and earned about EUR 58,000. After the move I began drawing compensation from my U.S. single-m...
If we register as an MSB, can the supporting documents stay with our founders overseas or do they have to be kept in the United States?
Our crypto company has foreign founders and most internal records are kept by the parent team in Hong Kong. We are now preparing for possible FinCEN MSB registration and someone asked whether the supp...
We now think the platform should have registered as an MSB months ago. Is late registration only an administrative fix, or can FinCEN penalties become serious?
The compliance team has finally accepted that our transaction flow likely falls inside money transmission, but no FinCEN registration was filed when the product launched. Some founders keep talking li...
We moved crypto across wallets and exchanges for years. Now the broker statement is incomplete. How should the basis rebuild file be structured?
The business used multiple custodians, several self-hosted wallets, and a long chain of transfer-ins before finally selling through a broker that issued only partial digital asset reporting. The accou...
Our exchange never sent Form 1099-DA. Can we still just wait until they do before filing?
The business sold digital assets in 2025 through a platform that we expected would send the new Form 1099-DA, but nothing has arrived. The accounting team is split between filing based on our own reco...
We blocked sanctioned crypto on our platform. Do we have to liquidate it into dollars or put it in an interest-bearing account?
Our compliance team blocked virtual currency connected to a sanctioned person, but treasury is now asking how the blocked property must actually be held. One internal view is that we should immediatel...
A crypto counterparty says they are legit because they show up in FinCEN's MSB search. Is that actually meaningful?
We are evaluating a crypto payments partner and their main credibility pitch is that they are listed in FinCEN's MSB registrant search. Someone on our business team is treating that like a regulatory ...
We identified a blocked person linked to a hosted wallet on our platform. Do we have to freeze the wallet and report it, or can we just reject future transfers?
Our compliance team found that a hosted wallet on the platform appears to be linked to a person on the sanctions lists. The engineering team suggested simply refusing future transactions and leaving t...
We may have crossed into money transmission last quarter. Does the FinCEN registration clock really start that fast?
Our crypto app originally launched as a wallet tool, but after a product change we now routinely receive digital assets from one customer and transmit value to another. Only now is the legal team tell...
Our 1099-DA shows proceeds but no basis for coins we bought before 2026. Is that normal or did the broker miss something?
I own a foreign-owned Wyoming LLC from Singapore and we sold part of our BTC position in early 2026 through a U.S.-facing broker. The statement shows proceeds clearly, but the cost basis field is blan...
We are not an exchange. We just help customers pay merchants in crypto. Can Form 1099-DA still treat us like a broker?
Our product is a payment-processing layer for merchants. Customers send digital assets to us, and we settle with merchants in cash or other digital assets. The product team keeps insisting that becaus...
Our company held a token through a hard fork, but we never received any new tokens. Is there still income?
The treasury wallet sat through a blockchain hard fork, and the team immediately assumed we had a tax event because everyone had read older articles saying forks were taxable. But in our case no new a...
Our single-member LLC mined crypto this year. Is that just ordinary income, or can self-employment tax also apply?
The LLC is foreign-owned but disregarded, and the owner personally runs mining equipment outside the U.S. The finance file already reflects gross income when coins were received, but a second adviser ...
We got Form 1099-DA with proceeds only and no basis. Is that normal for 2025?
Our U.S. entity sold crypto through a broker in 2025 and just received the first Form 1099-DA statement. It shows proceeds, but not basis, which made the finance team assume the form might be incomple...
Our transfer pricing issue repeats every year. Is an APA actually worth a six-figure fee, or is that only for giant multinationals?
We have the same related-party service and royalty issues every year, and each year the tax file feels like it is being rebuilt from scratch. Someone proposed an APA, but the user fees alone are high ...
We have intercompany pricing, but no real section 6662 documentation. Is that automatically a penalty disaster?
The company does have contracts and invoices, but not the kind of formal transfer pricing study people usually mean when they talk about section 6662 documentation. Now that a return review is happeni...
The IRS transfer pricing team wants our documentation in 30 days. Can we build it now, or have we already lost the contemporaneous-documentation advantage?
We have intercompany service fees between a U.S. corporation and a related foreign affiliate, and now the IRS has asked for transfer pricing documentation very quickly. Management is talking as if we ...
One U.S. shareholder is filing Form 5471 with full schedules for the corporation. Do the other U.S. shareholders still attach anything to their own returns?
We have a foreign corporation with several U.S. owners, and our tax team is trying to use the rule that allows one person to file the main Form 5471 package on behalf of others in some cases. The prob...
Our accountant wants to mail Form 926 separately after the return is filed. Is that how the IRS wants it handled?
The outbound transfer itself was already reviewed, and now the only dispute is procedural. One person on the team treats Form 926 like a stand-alone notice that can be mailed whenever we finish it. An...
My tax advisor mentioned IRC 269B 'stapled entities' — what does this mean and could it apply to my structure?
I'm an Israeli entrepreneur and I own both an Israeli company and a U.S. LLC. The ownership of both entities is identical — I own 100% of each. My tax advisor mentioned IRC 269B and said 'stapled enti...
I am an unrelated minority U.S. shareholder in a foreign-controlled CFC and cannot get full tax books. Does the IRS let me use alternative information?
I own a minority stake in a foreign corporation that may be a foreign-controlled CFC, but I do not have the power to demand full tax accounting packages from the controlling foreign owners. That makes...
We make payments to a foreign parent, but our group is nowhere near $500 million. Do we even care about Form 8991 yet?
Our U.S. corporation pays management fees and licensing charges to a related foreign parent, so BEAT gets mentioned every time cross-border tax comes up. But our group revenue is nowhere near the gian...
I have GILTI, but I am just an individual and did not make a section 962 election. Do I still file Form 8993?
I keep seeing online comments that GILTI comes with a section 250 deduction, and that makes people say 'just file Form 8993.' But I am not a domestic corporation, and I have not made a section 962 ele...
My CPA says I might make a section 962 election because of GILTI. Is that an entity change or only a tax-election change for me personally?
I am a U.S. individual who owns a foreign corporation directly. My CPA said section 962 might help because of the GILTI inclusion, but I keep hearing people describe it almost like creating a temporar...
Common AMT Triggers: Private Activity Bonds (PABs) Explained (Ep. 19)
I'm worried about the Alternative Minimum Tax: Common AMT Triggers: Private Activity Bonds Explained. How do I know if this affects me and what can I do about it?
I contributed $150,000 cash to a foreign company I now own 20% of. Is Form 926 triggered even though it was just startup capitalization?
I am a U.S. founder and wired $150,000 into a newly formed foreign corporation as part of the initial capitalization. I now own 20% after the transfer. The deal felt like ordinary founder funding, not...
We operate in Portugal without a separate local company yet. Is that a Form 8858 foreign branch issue or only an FDE issue after we incorporate there?
Our U.S. business opened operations in Portugal and hired a local team, but we still have not formed a separate Portuguese company. One adviser says Form 8858 only comes in once there is a foreign dis...
I do not directly own the foreign company. I only look like an owner because of downward attribution from a foreign parent. Do I still have a full Form 5471 filing?
I work through a U.S. subsidiary, and after the attribution rules changed, my tax adviser said I might be treated as owning stock in a foreign sister company even though I do not directly hold any of ...
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