The form was a W-7. I had a US tax reason and no Social Security number, so the number I was applying for was an ITIN: nine digits, and it starts with 9. It is not work authorization. It is the taxpayer number the IRS issues when you need to file and you cannot get an SSN.
The instruction that stopped me was about identity. A passport is the only document that proves both identity and foreign status by itself. I read that as "put the passport in the envelope." It is the only passport I have. I use it to go home. Sending the original away for weeks felt like handing over the trip.
What the form is actually asking for
The W-7 is usually filed with a tax return, not as a form you post by itself because you would like a number. The return is the reason. The application is how the IRS knows which person the return belongs to. I had those two pieces backwards for a while. I thought the number came first and the filing came later. For most people it is the same package.
The processing time I kept seeing was about seven weeks, and longer in the peak season or when the papers come from abroad: more like nine to eleven. That is a long time to be without the booklet you travel on. It is also long enough that a second copy of the instructions, printed and marked up, was worth more than another evening of guessing.
How to get an ITIN as a foreigner is the page that put the passport line in plain words. A Certifying Acceptance Agent, a VITA site, or a Taxpayer Assistance Center can review the passport so the original does not have to be mailed. I had walked past that sentence twice. The third time I wrote it on the envelope and did not seal it.
The number is not the end of the errand
When the letter comes, the number is still not a bank login and not a credit file. The order that made sense after the letter, and that I did not invent, is the one ITIN Club writes down for anyone in this spot: get the ITIN, open a US bank account that will take it, start a credit file, let a score exist, and only then look at cards or travel. The club is free. I am not quoting a price because I did not pay one.
The bank step is its own guide, and it is the one I opened the week the letter arrived: How to open a US bank account as a non-resident. A personal account and a company account are different desks. If you also have a US LLC, the business account wants the company's papers, the EIN letter (a CP 575 or a 147C), and a passport for each 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.
That is a later week. The week of the W-7, the only decision was whether the passport left the house.
What I would do again
I would print the W-7 and the return and sit them in one stack, in that order, before I touched an envelope. I would look up a CAA, a VITA site, or a Taxpayer Assistance Center in the same afternoon, and I would treat "mail the original" as the fallback, not the plan. I would put a date on the calendar seven weeks out, and another one further out, and I would not book anything that required that passport to be in my bag.
I would also stop calling the ITIN a work paper. Nothing on the card says you can take a job. It says the IRS can match a return to a person who does not have an SSN. Those are different sentences, and mixing them up is how I almost described the application to a friend.
None of this is tax advice. It is the reading I did after I had already addressed the envelope, and the pages I wish had been the first tab:
The passport stayed in the drawer. The form still went out. That was the whole win.
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