How to Apply for an EIN in Idaho

The EIN step itself

One federal form, one agency, the same options wherever the business sits: online, fax, mail, or the international phone line. The method decides the timeline, not the state. Every method and what it actually takes covers that in full, and it applies to Idaho unchanged.

What Idaho needs first

Form your entity with the Idaho Secretary of State before applying. The IRS asks for the legal name and formation date exactly as the state recorded them, and a mismatch is one of the common causes of a rejected application.

Idaho assigns its own file number. It identifies your company in state records and is not a tax ID. It cannot be used where an EIN is asked for, and the IRS has no record of it.

What Idaho requires once you have the EIN

• Apply for state tax permits through Idaho Business Registration (IBR), the online application the Idaho State Tax Commission uses for seller's permits, income tax withholding accounts and travel and convention permits. The Tax Commission asks applicants to have the EIN ready, along with the Social Security number or EIN of every owner, partner and officer.
• File the annual report with the Secretary of State through SOSBiz by the last day of the month in which the LLC was formed, every year starting one year after formation. SOSBiz shows the next due date on the LLC's record, and the Secretary of State can administratively dissolve an LLC that misses it.

What is actually different about Idaho

• Idaho Business Registration is one application shared by three agencies: it opens the State Tax Commission's seller's permit and withholding account, the Idaho Department of Labor's unemployment insurance account, and the Industrial Commission permits an employer needs. The form also asks an LLC how it chose to be taxed (single member, partnership, corporation or S corporation), the same classification it made with the IRS.
• The Idaho State Tax Commission's permit guidance says a single-member LLC must have an EIN, even though the IRS does not require one for a disregarded single-member LLC with no employees and no excise tax liability. The IRS notes that such an LLC can still get an EIN when it needs one for a bank account or for state tax purposes, and Idaho's registration form asks for it.
• Idaho's local sales taxes are local option taxes adopted by voters in a short list of resort cities, on top of the state sales tax. Some of those cities apply theirs only to lodging, liquor by the drink and restaurant food, and questions about a city's tax go to the city rather than the State Tax Commission.