A lot of people approach me about their paypal under US LLC or US INC getting suspended after 1-2 years when paypal start asking them about SSN. It’s so sad to see such an old established account under your legal entity getting suspended just because you were not aware of the fact that you should have applied for your ITIN number 2 years ago the moment you setup your LLC or Inc. So basically ITIN number is Individual Tax ID number and is similar to SSN number given to US citizens and starts with 9 instead of 7.
Why is this ITIN so important? ITIN is just your US Tax ID. Use it. File for your annual tax returns every year based on this ITIN. Why? Because in the eyes of legal tax system you want to be considered a US resident and US Tax payer. Why not?
So how did you get your ITIN for the first time? You apply for your ITIN first time on IRS website and you can apply it using your Pakistan address and IRS will be happy to mail out the ITIN number to your Pakistan address also however my advise is to get it in any US address instead of Pakistan address. Why? Because if your ITIN comes at your US address, in the eyes of Tax system, you are considered a US resident now. After 6 months you will start receiving credit card offer letters and you start building a credit score in US. It’s up to you if you want to accept any credit ccard offer or loan but the real purpose here is not getting a credit card. The real purpose here is the ability to get your paypal account, ebay and Amazon using your ITIN number. That is the real purpose. We want inclusion rather than exclusion. Right now we Pakistanis are being marginalized, we are not in any financial system inclusion and we want to find every legal and legit way of obtaining this inclusion.
You can apply your Amazon account using your ITIN if you want. You can give this ITIN later to paypal as well. The key is your address in US (you are technincally a tenant of your mamoun) + the bank account. Now setting up a personal bank account is very hard indeed so the easier option is setting up bank account of your LLC or INC and applying for your Amazon and paypal using your organization EIN number and then providing them with your ITIN number if they ask for it. Of course all of this would cost you money. Accountant fee in US could be $1000-$1800 per year. So accountant may charge $100-150 a month on your US debit card that you will get from your bank for your LLC or INC.
After your ITIN + EIN sorted and now you are in the business. And mamoun is not the share holder and you control 100% all the functions of your company or you can run in partnership with him. Down the line 1-2 years time you can apply for E1/E2 visa on the basis of your business and committing to add more capital or committing to hire local employees in US and committing to expand your business you will be able to obtain E1/E2 as well.
If you have questions, you are welcome to join our Facebook Group to ask any question https://goo.gl/dhcBby
