A useful compliance calendar starts with your company’s actual obligations. This guide covers common federal, state, and registered-agent entries for a foreign-owned US LLC. It is a starting point, not a complete calendar for every company.

The Form 5472 instructions here apply to a US single-member LLC with default disregarded tax status and no corporate election. Check other tax and filing obligations with an adviser before treating the calendar as complete.

The federal layer: Form 5472, the one that bites

A foreign-owned US disregarded entity files Form 5472 with a pro-forma Form 1120 for years with reportable transactions. A single-member LLC’s default tax treatment is disregarded status, but a corporate election changes the return instructions. Confirm the classification and filing requirement before setting this entry.

Three mechanics matter for the calendar.

First, the deadline: Form 5472 is due by the due date of that pro-forma Form 1120, including extensions. Pull the current date from the IRS Form 1120 instructions each year rather than trusting a remembered one.

Second, the delivery method: a foreign-owned US disregarded entity cannot file Form 5472 electronically. Fax or mail only, using the fax number and mailing address printed in the current revision of the IRS Form 5472 instructions at irs.gov. Contact details change without notice, so pull them fresh every filing season.

Third, the stakes: missing the filing, or filing it badly, triggers a five-figure penalty that compounds if the failure continues after the IRS notifies you. The instructions are blunt about what counts as missing it:

“Filing a substantially incomplete Form 5472 constitutes a failure to file Form 5472.” IRS Form 5472 instructions

The registry’s standing advice, repeated here because it is the single most valuable habit on this page: put the Form 5472 deadline in your calendar the week you form, not at year-end, not when a reminder email arrives from a service you may have stopped paying. The full mechanics, including the pro-forma 1120 cover sheet and the transaction log worth keeping, are in the Form 5472 guide.

The state layer: the report your state calls its own

Your state of formation wants to hear from you on a schedule too. Depending on the state, the recurring obligation is called an annual report, a periodic report, an information report, a franchise tax, or an annual tax, and it exists whether or not your company earned a cent.

This is the layer where a single page of prose cannot serve you, for two reasons. Fees and deadlines vary enormously from state to state, and states change both without ceremony. Any figure printed in an article ages badly; a stale number is worse than none. So this page teaches you the shape of the obligation and sends you to a dated source for your state’s specifics.

Every state’s recurring cadence follows one of three patterns:

  1. A fixed calendar date or window. The whole state files in the same season, regardless of when any company was formed. Connecticut and Delaware work this way: one date on the state’s calendar, the same for everyone.
  2. An anniversary-month deadline. Your due date is personal, keyed to the month your LLC was formed. Washington and New Jersey follow this pattern, so two companies in the same state can have deadlines eleven months apart.
  3. A biennial odd/even cycle. Some states collect a report every two years, with your filing year determined by an odd-or-even rule. Kansas and Iowa run biennial cycles, which means a full calendar year can pass with nothing due, followed by a year when something very much is.

A handful of states, meanwhile, require no recurring report from LLCs at all.

Which pattern your state follows, what it charges, and when your specific window opens are all in the True Cost Worksheet, where every state’s recurring fees carry a verification date and an official source. Look up your state there, note the cadence pattern and your next due date, and put it in the calendar next to Form 5472. If you have not yet chosen a state, the recurring layer is a better basis for the decision than the formation fee, and the worksheet lets you compare both.

The registered agent: the renewal that guards your good standing

The third recurring entry is contractual rather than governmental, and easy to forget for exactly that reason.

Every state requires your LLC to maintain a registered agent with a physical street address in the state to receive legal papers. As a non-resident you hire one, and the requirement is continuous: the agent must exist every day of the company’s life, not just at formation. If the agent resigns or your service lapses and no replacement is on file, the company can lose good standing with the state, and a prolonged lapse risks administrative dissolution, the state unwinding your LLC for you.

Registered agent services typically bill annually on the anniversary of your signup, which is usually within days of your formation date but is set by the provider, not the state. Treat the renewal as its own calendar entry with its own date. Do not assume the agent will chase you; some send one reminder to an inbox you stopped watching, then resign.

What does not recur

Two items new founders habitually over-schedule. Strike them from the calendar.

The BOI report. Under FinCEN’s final rule, effective August 14, 2026, beneficial ownership reporting applies only to companies formed under foreign law that register to do business in a US state. US-formed companies are permanently exempt, and FinCEN expressly declined to carve foreign-owned US companies back into the requirement. Your foreign ownership changes nothing: a US-formed LLC files no federal BOI report, initial or annual. If a service is charging you for recurring “BOI compliance” on a US-formed LLC, it is billing you for an exemption you already hold. Refuse it.

The EIN. Your federal tax ID is a one-time acquisition. Obtained once, by fax or mail if you have no SSN or ITIN, it never renews, expires, or bills again. The full process is in the EIN guide.

Build your calendar in ten minutes

The week the state approves your articles, sit down once and make these entries. Give every deadline a reminder four weeks ahead; fax-and-mail filings and lapsed inboxes do not forgive last-minute discoveries.

  1. Form 5472, if required. Confirm the LLC’s tax classification and reportable transactions. For the foreign-owned US disregarded-entity case, check the current Form 1120 due date and Form 5472 delivery instructions. Record the applicable deadline and a preparation reminder.
  2. State report or franchise tax. Look up your state in the True Cost Worksheet. Note the cadence pattern, fixed date, anniversary month, or biennial cycle, and enter your next due date with its four-week reminder. If biennial, mark the off year too, so silence reads as correct rather than forgotten.
  3. Registered agent renewal. Find the renewal date in your agent agreement or first invoice. Enter it, recurring annually, with the same head start.
  4. An annual verification pass. One entry, once a year, to re-pull the Form 5472 due date and delivery details from the current IRS instructions and re-check your state’s schedule in the worksheet. Deadlines and fax numbers change without notice; ten minutes a year absorbs that.
  5. Other obligations. Ask your adviser what additional filings apply to the company’s activity, ownership, and jurisdictions. This list does not establish that nothing else is due.

Keep this calendar with your company records and review it as your circumstances change. If you have not formed yet, start with the formation guide and LLC checklist.

This is an independent registry publication, not a law firm, not a tax practice, and not a government agency. The federal process facts above trace to the IRS Form 5472 instructions and FinCEN’s final rule as published in the Federal Register, named in plain text. Whether your LLC owes US tax anywhere is a question about your facts and your country’s rules: adviser territory, not registry territory.