How to Apply for an EIN in Indiana

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 Indiana unchanged.

What Indiana needs first

Form your entity with the Indiana 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.

Indiana assigns its own business ID. 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 Indiana requires once you have the EIN

• Register with the Indiana Department of Revenue through INBiz for the tax types the business needs. DOR then issues an Indiana Taxpayer Identification Number, and an LLC that makes retail sales also receives a Registered Retail Merchant Certificate for each retail location.
• File the Business Entity Report with the Secretary of State through INBiz every other year, by the end of the month in which the LLC was formed.

What is actually different about Indiana

• Indiana's Business Entity Report is biennial and is keyed to the month the LLC was formed, not a single statewide deadline. The report is past due after the end of that month in the reporting year, and the due date is shown on the company's record in the INBiz business search under its business ID.
• The Indiana Department of Revenue identifies a business by its own ten-digit Taxpayer Identification Number, plus a three-digit location number for each location. Several locations under one EIN can be consolidated under one TID, but separate companies with separate EINs cannot share one, and a change that produces a new EIN requires a new state registration.
• Indiana employers withhold county income tax as well as state income tax, at rates set for each of Indiana's 92 counties. Each employee's county is fixed as of January 1 on Form WH-4, the Employee's Withholding Exemption and County Status Certificate, and a move later in the year does not change it until the next calendar year.