How long does the IRS take to fax back my EIN?

The IRS target and what we actually measure

Two numbers get confused here, so both belong in one place.

The IRS's own published target under the Fax-TIN program is 4 business days. That is what the IRS aims for, and it is what most guides quote.

What we measure is slower. Across Form SS-4 filings faxed through FaxTerra, a reply, when one comes, takes about 16 days, 95 percent of the replies that come have arrived by day 21, and the slowest we have recorded took 39 days. Replies do not trickle in evenly; 79 percent of them land in weeks two and three, and few come after. Not every filing gets one, and 36 percent of first filings are never answered on that filing.

So if it has been a few days and nothing has come, nothing is wrong. The full distribution, with its sample size and method, is on our measured IRS response-time page.

At three weeks, send it again, then call

This is the part the averages hide. Once 95 percent of the replies that come have arrived, the question stops being "how long is the average" and becomes "given nothing has come by now, will anything come at all". Of first filings still unanswered at three weeks, only 10 percent are answered by day 45.

So at three weeks, send the same form again, to the same line, with your fax number in the "Applicant's fax number" box. Of filings sent again on or after day 21 with nothing yet, 39 percent were answered within three weeks of the re-send; of filers with nothing by then who did not send again, 11 percent ever got a fax-back. People who re-send are also paying closer attention, and a filer who got the EIN by phone shows as unanswered, so the gap is not a measure of what re-sending alone does. A reply to a re-send typically comes about 16 days after it.

If the re-send brings nothing within three weeks, call. It is the reliable way to get your EIN from that point, and it works long after the fax-back window has passed. The Form SS-4 guide has what the IRS says about using one application method for each entity.

Calling the IRS about a pending SS-4

Inside the United States, call the IRS Business and Specialty Tax Line on (800) 829-4933, Monday to Friday, 7am to 7pm local time. From outside the United States, call (267) 941-1099. That international line is not toll free, and its hours are set in Eastern Time, so check the difference before you dial.

Have these ready before you call, because the agent will ask for them: the legal name of the entity exactly as you wrote it on the form, its mailing address, the name and taxpayer identification number of the responsible party from line 7, the date you faxed the form, and the fax number you want the reply sent to.

Ask the agent for a Letter 147C, the official EIN verification. If you ask for written confirmation by fax, the agent can fax the letter to you during the call, so keep your fax number working. By mail it takes 10 to 14 business days.

Which of the three SS-4 fax lines to use

The IRS publishes three fax lines for Form SS-4, and which one you use is decided by where the business is, not by your nationality or citizenship. That distinction catches people out, so it is worth stating plainly: a founder who is not a US citizen, applying for a US-based company, still uses the domestic line.

The IRS puts it as whether your principal business, office or agency, or your legal residence if you are applying as an individual, is located in a state or Washington DC. If it is, fax (855) 641-6935. If you have no legal residence, principal place of business, or principal office or agency in any state, you use one of the two international lines instead, and that choice is about where you are faxing from: (855) 215-1627 from inside the United States, or (304) 707-9471 from outside it. The last of those is not toll free.

Send to one line. If you send it again at three weeks, use the same line. The IRS says a business entity should have only one EIN and that you can apply only for one EIN per day by any method. If you are unsure which line applies to you, the IRS instructions for Form SS-4 are the authority; we are not able to advise you on it.

Which IRS faxes get a reply at all

Only the EIN application does. Form SS-4 goes to one of three published IRS fax lines, chosen by where your business is based, and the IRS faxes a notice carrying your assigned EIN back to the fax number on the form.

The EIN application is the only IRS destination in our own directory marked as one that faxes a reply back, and it is the only one we have ever recorded a fax-back arriving from. That is why we only offer to watch for a reply on SS-4 sends. We are describing what we can see, not making a claim about how the IRS handles every other form.

One field decides whether any of it reaches you: "Applicant's fax number", in the signature block at the bottom of the form. That is the box the IRS reads. If it is empty, the IRS does not say how or when your EIN would arrive.

What the SS-4 Assistant does, and what it does not

When you fax one of the SS-4 lines from FaxTerra, the composer offers to send it again for you if the IRS does not reply. The offer says what would happen and what it costs, and How this works, one tap under it, gives every condition: if no fax from a line we have seen the IRS fax EIN assignments from has reached your number by day 21, we fax the same document to the same line again, once, from your number, and email you that we did. It takes the fax's own pages from your balance, like any send, and it goes only if the number you sent from is still on your account, the document is still stored, your balance covers it, sending is not paused on the account, your number has finished being set up, you have not sent a form to an IRS SS-4 line in the last day, and you have not faxed an SS-4 again since. If any of that fails, the email says why and what to do instead. Just above the one button that agrees to it, the offer asks you to put your number in the "Applicant's fax number" box, because sending the same form again only helps if that box is right.

We email you once, on day 21, to say that we sent it again, that we could not and why, or that a fax arrived from an IRS line, in which case nothing is sent again. It says the one next step, and its one button opens the fax's page, which has the rest, or your sent faxes if you deleted the fax. If we sent it again, that re-send is watched the same way but never sent a third time. You get one more email at its own day 21, which says to call if nothing has arrived, with the script above.

Every delivered fax to an SS-4 line also gets a card on its status page, whether or not you opted in: how many days it has been, what is normal, and, if nothing has arrived by day 21, a Send it again button that does the same re-send in one tap, at the same cost. When it cannot run, for any of these reasons, the card says why and gives you the one thing to do instead, such as adding pages or sending a new copy of the form. While an automatic re-send is scheduled, that card says so, tells you if it would not go as things stand, and under Other options lets you cancel it until it starts going out, and from day 7 it also offers Send it again now, the same one-tap re-send, if you would rather not wait. Your inbox catches the reply either way, and a fax from an IRS line is labeled "Likely from the IRS".

It does not fill in your form, choose your entity type, advise you, act as your third party designee, or call the IRS for you. We do not read your form, and a re-send is your own pages, unchanged, to the line you chose.

It needs a receiving number to work, because that is where the reply lands. FaxTerra is not affiliated with the IRS, and none of this is tax or legal advice; the IRS instructions are the authority.

What we store about your application

We store no answers, because we never ask for any. Arming the watch asks you nothing beyond the one decision.

What we keep is a handful of workflow facts your account already produced by sending a fax: which published IRS line you faxed, whether your account held a receiving number at that moment, whether you asked us to send it again, which fax that re-send was, whether a fax later arrived from a known IRS line, and how it ended. No names, no addresses, no Social Security or taxpayer identification numbers, no dates of birth. There is nothing sensitive in it to protect, which is exactly why we built it this way.