Can a non-resident own and manage a Delaware LLC?

The answer is unambiguous: yes. Section 18-101(14) defines "person" to include a natural person and every kind of entity, "in each case, whether domestic or foreign". Section 18-101(8) needs only one or more members. Nothing in Chapter 18 imposes a citizenship or residence test on a member or a manager.

The certificate is executed by "1 or more authorized persons" (§ 18-201(a)) — who need not be members, and on whom the chapter imposes no residence requirement either.

Compare Uzbekistan, where a foreign founder's ownership is equally unrestricted but the signature is not: a filing whose founders include a non-citizen needs an ERI, and that needs a PINFL first. Delaware imposes no equivalent identity infrastructure at the formation stage.

The registered agent: not optional, and not a formality

Section 18-104(a): every LLC must have and maintain a registered office in Delaware and a registered agent for service of process with a business office at that address. The agent may be an individual resident in Delaware, or a domestic or foreign entity.

For a founder who is not in the US, the agent is the practical substitute for a presence: it is the address on the public record, and under § 18-1107(d) the Secretary of State mails the annual tax statement in care of the registered agent. Lose the agent and you lose the notice.

Section 18-104(d): if the agent resigns and no successor is designated within 30 days, the certificate of formation is cancelled.

Agents charge for the service, and it is an annual cost. The amount is set by the market, not by statute, and no figure is given here.

An EIN without an SSN

On the IRS's own guidance (checked 7 August 2026), the route depends not on your citizenship but on the business's principal place of business.

If it is outside the US, you can apply:

  • by phone: 267-941-1099, Monday to Friday, 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time;
  • by submitting Form SS-4 by fax: 855-215-1627 (within the US) or 304-707-9471 (outside the US);
  • or by mail: Internal Revenue Service, Attn: EIN International Operation, Cincinnati, OH 45999.

If the principal place of business is in the US: online (free, direct from the IRS), by fax to 855-641-6935 with the EIN returned in about 4 business days, or by mail in about 4 weeks. Whatever the channel, it is one EIN per day.

The responsible party. The application must name the person who controls the entity and its assets, and per the IRS it "must generally include" that person's name, their Social Security number, ITIN or EIN, and their signature. The IRS also states:

Nominees are not authorized to apply for an EIN. A nominee who applies for an EIN puts the entity's information and privacy at risk.

That matters commercially: services offering to "be" your responsible party are doing the thing the IRS names as not authorised.

This article stops here. The IRS page gives the international route and "generally" requires one of three numbers for the responsible party, but it does not say what a responsible party who holds none of the three enters in that field. The Form SS-4 instructions were not checked for this article, so no answer is written here — settle it from the SS-4 instructions before you apply.

Beneficial ownership reporting (FinCEN)

The alert dated 26 March 2025 on fincen.gov/boi: all entities created in the United States — including those previously known as "domestic reporting companies" — and their beneficial owners are now exempt from the requirement to report beneficial ownership information (BOI) to FinCEN.

FinCEN's interim final rule of 26 March 2025 confines "reporting company" to entities formed under the law of a foreign country that have registered to do business in a US state, and such entities need not report US persons.

So a Delaware LLC is created in the United States, and as the rule stands there is no BOI filing obligation (checked 7 August 2026).

Three cautions belong to the statement itself:

  • it is an interim final rule, still described as such in August 2026;
  • the page asks readers to disregard its own older guidance — an official site carrying stale and current guidance side by side;
  • the Corporate Transparency Act has been litigated; the page records National Small Business United v. Yellen and the appeal.

This section is inseparable from the date it was checked.

The bank account — this part is not law

The three topics above come from law. Opening a bank account does not: it is individual bank policy, it varies between banks, and it changes without notice. This section can never reach the same standard of proof as the rest, and should be read accordingly.

What can be said from law:

  • § 18-912(a)(3): maintaining bank accounts is not, by itself, "doing business" in Delaware;
  • no statute requires an account anywhere in order to form or maintain the LLC;
  • the document a bank typically asks for is a certificate of good standing; under § 18-1105(a)(10) it costs $50, and its availability depends on the annual tax having been paid (§ 18-1107(k)).

Which banks onboard non-resident-owned LLCs, what documents they want, and whether they require the owner to appear in person are all bank policy. This article gives no figures and names no banks.

On the Uzbek side account opening is regulated: para. 19 of Cabinet Res. 66 forbids banks from demanding originals of the certificate or the founding documents, and permits an account to be opened remotely during registration — but only for entities whose founders are residents. The asymmetry is worth naming: in Uzbekistan the gap for a non-resident is written into the regulation; in the US it is written nowhere, which makes it harder to plan around, not easier.

Setting the expectation honestly

Forming the entity is the easy part and is fully described by statute. The tax number has a defined route with one unresolved detail. The bank account is nobody's law.

The formation procedure and the annual obligations are separate articles; the latter connects directly to what the bank will check — good standing.