Plenty of non-resident sellers assume they need a US LLC before they can sell on Amazon, Etsy, or Shopify. Often they don't — not to start, anyway.

What actually happens without a US entity

Amazon, Etsy, and similar marketplaces let you register as an individual foreign seller. Amazon's onboarding runs an automated tax interview that, for a non-US person selling as an individual, generates an IRS Form W-8BEN. Amazon does not suspend an account for lacking an EIN, as long as that interview is completed honestly and confirms your foreign status.

Where an LLC changes the tax interview

Once you do have a single-member LLC, the interview changes slightly: because a single-member LLC is a disregarded entity by default, you still generally select "Individual" and "Non-U.S. citizen" — the LLC doesn't change who the IRS considers the taxpayer, it just gives the income a business wrapper. The EIN becomes relevant less for the marketplace tax interview itself and more for everything around it: banking, Stripe, invoicing as a company rather than a person.

Etsy and Shopify, briefly

Etsy runs on a similar marketplace-facilitator model — a tax interview, no EIN required to simply list and sell. Shopify is really two different questions: listing products on your own Shopify store needs no US entity at all, but Shopify Payments (Shopify's built-in processor, running on the same rails as Stripe) checks the same business-identity requirements as a standalone Stripe account: EIN, formation documents, and identity for each 25%+ owner.

When the LLC actually starts to matter

  • You want to accept payments directly on your own site (Shopify Payments, Stripe) instead of relying on a marketplace's built-in checkout
  • You want your personal assets separated from the business as sales grow
  • You're selling across more than one platform and want one consistent business identity, invoices, and bank account behind all of them

What we tell clients honestly

We form the LLC and file the EIN. What you select in a marketplace's tax interview, and whether you need one platform's payment processor or another's, is between you and that platform — we don't give tax advice, and platform policies change. Check your current options directly in your seller dashboard before assuming anything here is still current.