Recalde Law Firm, P.A. is a Florida law firm with an office in Miami, Florida. We advise on United States law only. We do not practice Mexican law, and we do not give Mexican tax or succession advice. We do not practice the law of any other country. Formation of a non-U.S. entity, and the local law of that jurisdiction, are matters for local counsel. We handle the U.S. architecture: classification, the documents a U.S. custodian and a U.S. court will read, and coordination with the family's tax adviser.
A foreign trust, a foreign partnership, and a U.S. entity with a foreign owner often need an employer identification number before a bank will open an account or before a return can be filed. The person the IRS calls the responsible party frequently has no Social Security number and no individual taxpayer identification number. That fact closes the online application. It does not close the possibility of an EIN. It changes the channel.
This is the U.S. identification number used for administration and banking. It is not a residency election, and the instructions to Form SS-4 say not to use an EIN in place of an SSN or an ITIN. Families from Mexico, Colombia, or Brazil meet this at the first U.S. account. Families from Chile, Ecuador, or Panama meet it at the same counter. Home-country tax identification is a different system and stays with home-country counsel.
Who the responsible party is
The Instructions for Form SS-4 (revised December 2025) describe the responsible party as the person who ultimately owns or controls the entity, or who exercises ultimate effective control. For a trust, the instructions identify the responsible party as a grantor, owner, or trustor. The responsible party must be an individual, other than for a government entity. If that individual has no SSN or ITIN and is ineligible to obtain one, the instructions say to enter "foreign" or "N/A" on line 7b. An entry is required. We do not treat that line as a planning election. It is how the form records the fact.
A change in the responsible party is reported on Form 8822-B. The instructions state that changes in responsible parties must be reported within 60 days. An EIN issued to a trust or an entity that later changes who controls it is not finished on the day the number arrives.
The online application, and the other channels
The same instructions state that the principal officer, general partner, grantor, owner, or trustor must have a valid taxpayer identification number — an SSN, an EIN, or an ITIN — to use the online application. They also state that an applicant with no legal residence, principal place of business, or principal office or agency in the United States or its territories cannot use the online application. Both limits matter. A foreign person with no SSN or ITIN cannot complete the online path even if the entity has a U.S. address. A foreign entity with no U.S. office cannot use it either.
International applicants apply on Form SS-4 by telephone, by fax, or by mail. The IRS publishes the current telephone number, the fax numbers, and the mail address in the Form SS-4 instructions and on its employer-identification-number page. Those numbers have changed over time. We do not reprint them here. Use the instructions in force on the day the form is sent, complete one application only, and keep the signed copy. The IRS limits issuance to one EIN per responsible party per day. For a trust, the instructions apply that limit to the grantor, owner, or trustor.
A third-party designee may be authorized on the form to receive the number and answer questions about it. That authority ends when the EIN is assigned. It is not a lasting power of attorney, and it is not a reason to have someone apply who cannot answer for the entity.
What the number does, and what it does not do
The EIN lets the trust or the entity open an account, file the returns that belong to it, and be identified on someone else's return. A disregarded U.S. LLC owned by a foreign person uses its own EIN on Form 5472 even though it is disregarded for income tax. See Form 5472 and the foreign-owned disregarded LLC. None of that makes the responsible party a U.S. person. Residence is a separate test, described in who is a U.S. person for trust and entity planning.
We prepare the legal description the form has to match: the name of the trust or entity, who the responsible party is, and why the number is needed. The tax adviser decides which box describes the applicant and which return, if any, will be filed. The firm assigns responsibility for the classification. The account that needs the number is opening a U.S. account. The entity that needs it is often on holding structures for U.S. investments.