I found out the number had expired when a form asked for it and I typed it with full confidence. It was the same nine digits, starting with 9, that the IRS had mailed me years before. Nothing about the digits had changed. What had changed was that I had not put them on a federal tax return for three tax years in a row, and an ITIN that is not used on a federal return for three consecutive tax years expires.
No letter came. No banner. The number sat in my notes looking exactly as valid as the day it arrived.
What the number is, and what it is not
An ITIN is the taxpayer number the IRS issues when you have a reason to file and cannot get a Social Security number. It is nine digits and it starts with 9. It is not work authorization. Nothing on it says you can take a job. It lets the IRS match a return to a person who does not have an SSN.
You apply for it on Form W-7, usually in the same envelope as the return that needs it. A passport is the only document that proves both identity and foreign status by itself, and a Certifying Acceptance Agent, a VITA site, or a Taxpayer Assistance Center can review it so the original does not have to be mailed. The wait is about seven weeks, and closer to nine to eleven in peak season or when the papers come from abroad.
Renewing is the same form and the same kind of wait. That is the part I had not planned for. A number I thought of as permanent turned into a seven-week errand in the middle of a year when I needed it.
How to get an ITIN as a foreigner is where I reread the three-year rule. I had seen it before. I had filed it under things that happen to other people.
Why it mattered past the tax return
The return was not the only place the number lived. It was on my bank account. It was on the credit file I had spent two years building one small card at a time. A quiet number does not erase those, but every form that asks for it again becomes a question I cannot answer cleanly until the renewal comes back.
The order that got me here, and that I did not invent, is the one ITIN Club writes down: get the ITIN, open a US bank account that will take it, start a credit file, let a score exist, then look at cards and travel, and keep the number current the whole way. That last step is the one I skipped. The club is free, and the course Your first year with an ITIN puts staying current on the list instead of leaving it as a footnote.
The bank and the company are separate desks
I also run a small US LLC, and for a while I mixed up which number belonged to whom. The EIN is the company's number, not mine. It does not keep my ITIN alive, and it does not replace it on a form that is asking about me.
The company's bank account is its own errand. How to open a US bank account as a non-resident lists what a business account usually wants: the Articles of Organization, the EIN letter (a CP 575 or a 147C), and a passport for every owner with 25% or more. It wants a real street address for the business. A registered agent, a P.O. box, or a UPS Store does not count. The account belongs to the company.
A foreign-owned single-member LLC usually files Form 5472 every year, even in a year with no income. The penalty the club's notes mention for missing it starts at $25,000. I am repeating a filing fact, not giving advice about anyone's return, including mine.
What I do now
I put a line in my calendar every January that says "did the ITIN go on a federal return last year?" If the answer has been no twice in a row, the third year is the one to fix. I keep the W-7 instructions with my tax papers instead of with my immigration papers, because that is where I will look when the question comes up.
I check the credit file once the number is current again, not before. How to check your credit score is the page for that week.
None of this is tax advice. It is the reminder I did not get, written down for the next person whose number is about to go quiet:
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