Getting Paid by US Clients: Invoices, W-9s and ACH

When a US business pays a vendor, it collects a tax form to establish who it is paying and whether to withhold.

A US entity provides a W-9, giving its name, its EIN and its US address. Your single-member LLC is a US entity, so it provides a W-9 with the LLC's own details.

A foreign person or foreign entity provides a W-8 series form instead, which opens a different and slower conversation and may trigger withholding.

That difference is the whole reason a US LLC smooths payment from US clients. It moves you from the W-8 conversation to the W-9 one.

Whether that is the right answer for your specific facts is a tax question and this page does not answer it. How your LLC completes a W-9, and what your own position is behind it, depends on the entity's classification and on your circumstances. Get it wrong and you have misrepresented something to a payer. This is worth a practitioner's half hour.

Once the paperwork is done, the money has to move, and the cost difference over a year is larger than founders expect.

If your LLC has a US bank account, US clients can pay by ACH, which is what they prefer and what costs least. That is another reason the banking step matters more than the formation step.

The alternative, being paid by international wire to a home-country account, costs a fee at both ends plus an exchange spread on every invoice. On twelve invoices a year the difference is real money and it compounds with volume.

The figures above are typical ranges rather than quoted rates. Fees vary by institution and we have not verified specific bank schedules.

Practical, and unglamorous, and it is where payment actually stalls.

No legal entity name. The invoice must carry the LLC's exact registered name, matching what is on the W-9 and in their vendor record. A trading name alone gets returned.

No EIN, where their process requires it on the invoice rather than only on the W-9.

A mismatched remit-to address. The address on the invoice should match the vendor record. A new address triggers fraud checks, which in large companies means weeks.

No purchase order number, where one was issued. Automated AP systems reject on this alone.

No invoice number, or a duplicate of a previous one.

Bank details that changed mid-relationship. Changing payment details is the most-abused vector in invoice fraud, so a change will be verified by phone and will delay that invoice. Set the details correctly at onboarding.

Payment terms that contradict the contract. Net 30 on the invoice against net 60 in the agreement gets escalated rather than paid.

Register as a vendor before the first invoice. Provide the W-9 during onboarding. Confirm the remit-to details and the invoicing email address. Ask whether they pay by ACH and give the routing and account number then rather than later. Ask what their invoice must carry, because large companies will tell you.

Then invoice with exactly those fields, every time.

Money arriving in the company account is revenue. Money you then move to yourself is an owner draw, and that transfer is a reportable transaction on Form 5472 along with anything you put in.

So the getting-paid process and the annual filing are the same records viewed twice, which is the argument for categorizing from the first transaction rather than in March.

Do I give my client a W-9 or a W-8? Your US LLC is a US entity and provides a W-9 with its own EIN. How the form is completed for a disregarded entity, and what that means for your own position, is a question for a practitioner rather than for a page.

Will my client withhold tax from my payments? That depends on the form you provide and on your facts. It is a real question with a real answer and it is not one to guess at.

Can US clients pay me by ACH? Yes, if the LLC has a US bank account with a routing and account number. It is what they prefer and it costs the least.

Why does my invoice keep getting rejected? Usually the legal entity name, a mismatched remit-to address, or a missing purchase order number. Ask their AP team what their system requires; large companies will tell you.

Is it cheaper to be paid to my home-country account? Almost never. An international wire costs a fee at both ends plus an exchange spread on every invoice.