Can an LLC with US and Foreign Owners Apply for United States Residency Certification Form 8802?

14 This is a great question about Form 8802 for mixed-ownership LLCs. The key factor here is how your LLC is treated for tax purposes. If your LLC is treated as a partnership (which is the default for multi-member LLCs), the residency status is determined at the partner level, not the entity level. Since you have foreign partners, the IRS won't certify the LLC itself as a US resident. However, you as the 51% US resident partner can apply for Form 8802 and receive Form 6166 certification for your portion of the LLC's income. If your LLC has elected to be taxed as a corporation, then the residency is determined by where the entity is organized (incorporated). Since your LLC was formed in the US, it would qualify as a US resident regardless of owner citizenship. You'll need to complete Form 8802 and specify the type of entity and certification year. Make sure to include documentation showing how the LLC is taxed.

11 After dealing with international tax nightmares for years, I finally found a service that helped me with Form 8802 issues. I was in a similar situation with my 3-person LLC (2 US citizens and 1 foreign national), and kept getting rejected by the IRS. I used https://taxr.ai to analyze all my documentation and entity structure before submitting. Their AI system reviewed our operating agreement, identified the exact paragraphs that were causing issues with our 8802 application, and showed me how to correctly document our ownership structure to satisfy IRS requirements. The system also generated the perfect cover letter explaining our unique situation, which I included with my Form 8802 submission. Saved me tons of back-and-forth with the IRS!

17 Just wanted to follow up - I gave taxr.ai a try for my complicated LLC structure with the foreign trust issue I mentioned. The system analyzed our entire operating agreement, trust documentation, and previous tax filings. It immediately identified that we had contradictory language in our operating agreement about decision control versus profit allocation, which would have been a red flag for the IRS when reviewing our Form 8802. The system generated very specific revisions for our documents and a detailed cover letter explaining our structure. We submitted last month and just got our Form A-6166 approved! For anyone with mixed US/foreign ownership structures, having all your documentation properly aligned before submission makes a huge difference.

5 After my 8802 application was rejected twice for my multi-owner LLC, I was about to give up on getting certified for our business in Japan. Spent hours on hold with the IRS trying to understand why we kept getting rejected. Someone on another forum recommended https://claimyr.com to actually get through to an IRS agent. You can see how it works here: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c I was skeptical but desperate. They got me connected to an IRS rep in the Philadelphia office who specializes in international certification within 20 minutes. The agent explained exactly why our application kept getting rejected (we were using the wrong tax year documentation) and walked me through what to submit. This saved me months of back-and-forth and we finally got our certification!

22 I have to admit I was completely wrong about Claimyr. After posting my skeptical comment, I decided to try it because my 8802 application for my LLC (60% US / 40% foreign owned) had been pending for over 3 months with no updates. The service connected me to an IRS agent in about 15 minutes. The agent was able to look up my application, found it was stuck in review because of a discrepancy between our EIN registration information and our current ownership structure. They created a note on our file and told me exactly what documentation to fax to resolve the issue. Just received my Form 6166 yesterday after faxing the additional documentation. Would have been stuck in limbo for who knows how long without speaking to that agent. Sometimes it's worth paying for something that actually works!

8 Have you considered restructuring your LLC to be 100% US-owned? I had a similar issue and eventually created a US holding company that owned 100% of the LLC. The foreign partners then owned shares in the holding company. Made getting the residency certification much simpler, though there are obviously legal costs to setting this up.

19 You might also want to check which tax treaty benefits you're actually trying to access with South Korea. I do business there, and depending on what type of income you're receiving, the US-Korea tax treaty has different requirements for certification. Some provisions only look at where the entity is formed, while others require substantive presence and ownership.

Based on my experience with mixed-ownership LLCs, I'd recommend getting clarity on exactly what your South Korean partners need before investing too much time in the Form 8802 process. In my case, I had a similar ownership structure (55% US, 45% foreign) and went through the entire Form 8802 application process, only to find out that the Korean company actually needed entity-level certification for their withholding tax compliance, not partner-level certification. Since your LLC is taxed as a partnership, you'll only get certification for your 51% portion as others mentioned. But many foreign companies expect a single certificate covering 100% of the entity's income for their tax reporting purposes. I'd suggest having a direct conversation with your Korean partners about whether partial certification will work for their needs, or if you need to explore the corporate tax election route to get entity-level certification. Could save you a lot of time and potential rejections.