After you have filed your Articles of Organization for your Colorado LLC, your next step is to obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the Internal Revenue Service.
The EIN, otherwise known as a FEIN (Federal Tax identification Number) and sometimes referred to generically as a TIN (Tax Identification Number), is a nine digit number beginning with two digits followed by a hyphen followed by seven digits, like this: 12-3456789. The EIN is used by the IRS to specifically identify your LLC as a separate entity from you, personally.
If you have formed a single member LLC — that is, if you are the only owner — and if you intend to remain the only member of the LLC, and if you will not be hiring employees, then you do not have to obtain a EIN. However, because business situations change and because it is so easy to get an EIN, it makes sense to go ahead and obtain a unique EIN for the LLC. Getting one later can be a little bit of a pain, and there is no real downside to obtaining the EIN now.
To get started, go to the IRS’ dedicated page for obtaining EINs. I have compiled a slideshow below that shows every screen that I went through to obtain an EIN for a particular new Colorado LLC. Before we get to the application process, a few notes are in order:
- Your experience will vary a little based on the type of business you are starting. For the example below, I am starting a LLC for a vacation rental home. Also, the IRS updates and changes this site from time to time, so some screens could look different for you.
- I will skip an explanation of some pages in this process that are self-explanatory.
- You can see the slide number by hovering your cursor over the slide. I will refer to particular slide numbers below.
- I will assume you are filling out the application for a new Colorado LLC of which you are a member. If you are not a member, then there are additional steps you need to take, which I will not be covering here.
Click APPLY ONLINE NOW on the slide 1 screen. Slide 2 shows you the scary pop up meant to make you take this seriously; go ahead and click OK.
On slide 4, be sure to tick “Limited Liability Company”. Slide 6 asks for how many members there are in your Colorado LLC. “Members” in the LLC context, are owners. They are equivalent to stockholders in the corporation context. Include yourself in the count of members, along with each of your business partners that has some ownership interest in the LLC. On slide 8, tick “Started a new business”.
Slide 9 presents a problem. It may be fixed by now, but when I tried to select “Existing business” a few months ago, I could then complete the remaining portions of the application, but at the very end I would get an error message. Ultimately, I had to make myself the responsible party in order to get the process to work.
Note that on slide 11, due to where I live (we do not get mail at physical addresses in my town), I usually check the box for a different mailing address than the LLC physical address. This may not be necessary for your situation. You may get a verification note as I usually do, as shown on slide 12.
On slide 14, be careful to enter the name of your Colorado LLC exactly as you registered it with the Colorado Secretary of State. If you put any commas or other nonstandard characters in the name of your LLC, you will not be able to input them here. This is why I avoid putting commas in company names. If you have such nonstandard characters, however, it is doubtful that you will run into problems with the IRS by leaving them out here.
Most Colorado LLCs will select “No” for each question on slide 15, except perhaps for the last one. It may take some searching on slide 16 to figure out how to classify your business; your best guess will be fine.
On slide 20, make sure you select “Receive letter online.” Double-check all of the information on the slide 21 summary. When you are on slide 22, go ahead and print this page using your browser’s print function (I always save to pdf instead of using paper). If you hit the buttons too hastily here, you can skip right over the part where you get your EIN and, more importantly, the EIN Confirmation Letter. Once you have saved this screen, go ahead and click to open your EIN Confirmation Letter, which should look something like this. Save the EIN letter on your computer. You may also want to print slide 23.
That’s it! Now you have an EIN for your new Colorado LLC. In the next post we’ll address opening a bank account and perhaps a few other matters relating to getting your business established.
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This is another installment in our series, How to Start a Colorado LLC. Feel free to contact Evolvitas Law if you have any questions.












