How to Offer Form 5472 Filing as a Service to Your Clients

You can offer Form 5472 filing as a productised service without becoming a tax practice: scope it as coordination, price it as a fixed annual fee, and pay us $149 per Standard filing at checkout. There is no platform fee, no subscription and no commission — your margin is whatever you decide to charge your own client.

Most firms arrive from the same direction. You already form US LLCs for non-resident founders, act as their registered agent, or keep their books, and every March the same clients ask about a form nobody wants to own. Productising the answer turns that question into a line on your price list.

This covers who the offer suits, how to scope it, how to price it, how to word the client-facing description, and what to leave out. If you want the account first, apply for a partner account — applications are reviewed manually, typically within about one business day.

Which firms should offer Form 5472 filing as a service?

The offer works where you already hold the client relationship and the entity data: formation agencies, registered agents, accounting firms, and cross-border consultants managing several foreign-owned US single-member LLCs.

Three conditions make it worth productising:

1. You have repeat volume. Two or three filings a year is a favour. Ten or more is a service line.
2. You already hold the facts. If you formed the entity, you have the legal name, the formation state and date, and the EIN. That is most of the intake.
3. You want a fixed annual touchpoint. Form 5472 recurs every year the LLC has a reportable transaction, which makes it a natural renewal alongside registered-agent or bookkeeping fees.

It does not suit a firm that wants to sell tax planning under the same heading. The filing is an information return, not advice, and the two should not be bundled.

What exactly are you selling?

You are selling coordination and accountability, not preparation. A scope table communicates that best. Publish a version on your own service page.

Two boundaries there matter commercially. The person authorised to sign for the client LLC signs, in the browser, once; you never sign for them. And the advice row marked out of scope keeps your offer honest. The partner operating model sets out the same division of labour.

How should you price the service to your own client?

Price it as one fixed annual fee, quoted before you start, covering your coordination plus our filing fee. Our published fees are the same for partners as for direct customers: $149 Standard, ready in 5–7 business days; $199 Express, within 3 business days; +$99 per additional past tax year on either tier. IRS fax delivery is included, there is no platform fee and no subscription, and each filing is paid individually at checkout. Check current pricing before publishing a number.

The filing work and the accountant review are identical on both tiers; only speed differs. Express is therefore a scheduling product, not a quality one: price it as a rush surcharge.

What you charge your own client is your own commercial decision. We publish no volume discount, no tier table, no commission, no referral fee and no revenue share, and we pay you nothing. Volume pricing and consolidated invoicing are available on request through support@form5472prep.com, but nothing counts until it is confirmed in writing for your account, so do not advertise a rate you have not been given.

Worked unit economics: one filing and a 20-client book

Assume you charge your client $399 for the annual filing on our Standard tier. Per filing, and across a book of 20 client LLCs:

Twenty clients at $399 is $7,980 in, twenty Standard filings at $149 is $2,980 out, and the $5,000 difference equals twenty times the $250 per-filing margin.

A real book is mixed. Suppose 16 of the 20 go Standard, 4 need Express, 3 also need one additional past tax year, and you charge $499 for Express and $249 per past year:

• Paid to us: (16 × $149) + (4 × $199) + (3 × $99) = $2,384 + $796 + $297 = $3,477
• Billed to your clients: (16 × $399) + (4 × $499) + (3 × $249) = $6,384 + $1,996 + $747 = $9,127
• Your gross margin: $9,127 − $3,477 = $5,650

Check by line, not total: $250 × 16 = $4,000 on Standard, $300 × 4 = $1,200 on Express, $150 × 3 = $450 on extra years, totalling $5,650.

That is gross margin, not profit. Subtract your own time. If a filing costs your staff 40 minutes of intake, chasing and receipt-filing, a $250 margin implies about $375 an hour. If real handling time is two hours, the same $250 implies $125 an hour, and it is the price that needs revisiting, not the workflow. For market context, see what Form 5472 filing costs.

How do you describe the service to a client?

Write it around the obligation and the evidence, not the form number. A client who does not know what Form 5472 is cannot be sold on filing it faster. A workable structure, in reading order:

1. The obligation. The LLC is a foreign-owned US disregarded entity, so Form 5472 attaches to a pro forma Form 1120 and cannot be e-filed.
2. The exposure. The Form 5472 instructions state a $25,000 penalty applies to a reporting corporation that fails to file when due and in the manner prescribed, and that a substantially incomplete Form 5472 counts as a failure to file. That second point is why review matters.
3. What you do. Collect the facts, manage preparation and review, get the signature, confirm submission, file the evidence.
4. What the client does. Confirm facts, sign once.
5. Cost and turnaround. One fixed fee, one deadline.
6. Exclusions. Tax advice, other returns, state filings.

Be precise about evidence in writing. A provider fax receipt is transmission evidence — proof the package was sent — not IRS acceptance of the return. Promising a client "IRS confirmation" is a promise you cannot keep, and the most common way a well-run service line generates a complaint.

What should you exclude from the offer?

Exclusions are the part firms skip and the part that protects them. Leave out anything you cannot deliver repeatably, or are not qualified to deliver.

Do not advertise tax advice your firm is not qualified to give. Copy that offers to "advise on your US tax position", or implies a credential your firm does not hold, is a professional and legal exposure regardless of how the work is actually performed. The IRS states that anyone who prepares a federal return for compensation must hold an issued preparer tax identification number, and that representation rights before the IRS differ by credential — unenrolled preparers have narrower rights than enrolled agents, CPAs and attorneys. If your intended role touches preparation for compensation or representation, confirm your position with your own adviser before publishing the page. Nothing here is advice on your licensing position.

Our own posture, which you may quote: we are not a CPA firm and we do not give tax advice. We prepare and submit the information return, and a qualified tax accountant reviews every package.

How do you launch the offer?

1. Apply for a partner account, stating how many foreign-owned LLC clients you manage and whether you want standard or white-label delivery.
2. Decide your client price and whether Express is a surcharge or a separate tier.
3. Write the scope page using the table above, exclusions included.
4. Pick one intake owner in your firm who collects facts and chases signatures.
5. Run one live filing end to end before announcing the service, so your first client is not your test case.
6. Add it to renewals alongside registered-agent or bookkeeping invoices, since the obligation recurs annually.

Whether client emails carry your brand or ours is a separate decision, made at approval rather than automatically; the standard versus white-label comparison sets out what changes in each case.

Frequently asked questions

Do we pay a platform fee or subscription to offer this?

No. There is no platform fee and no subscription for a partner account. Each filing is paid individually at checkout at the published rate — $149 Standard, $199 Express, plus $99 per additional past tax year.

What commission or revenue share do you pay partners?

None. We pay partners nothing. Your margin is the difference between what you charge your own client and what you pay us per filing, and the client price is entirely your commercial decision.

Is there a volume discount for a large book of clients?

Volume pricing and consolidated invoicing are available on request through support@form5472prep.com. No discount schedule is published, so do not quote or advertise one before it is confirmed in writing for your account.

Can we sign the filing on the client's behalf?

No. The person authorised to sign for the client LLC signs, in the browser, once. The signature is embedded into every required box on the printable PDF. A print-sign-upload route exists if the client prefers.

Does the fax receipt prove the IRS accepted the return?

No. A provider-reported fax result is transmission evidence that the package was sent. It is not IRS acceptance of the return. Say that plainly in your own client-facing wording.

Are you a CPA firm we can present as our tax adviser?

No. We are not a CPA firm and we do not give tax advice. We prepare and submit the information return, and a qualified tax accountant reviews each package. Present us as a preparation and filing service.

Can we charge whatever we like for the service?

Your client fee is your own decision and we place no floor or ceiling on it. What you must not do is advertise a discount from us that has not been confirmed, or market tax advice your firm is not qualified to provide.

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Productising the filing is mostly a scoping exercise: fix the price, publish the exclusions, and run one filing before you announce the service. Apply for a partner account and tell us how many foreign-owned LLC clients you manage, then read the standard versus white-label comparison before you decide whose brand the client sees.

Educational content only; not tax or legal advice.