Wyoming LLC for Indie Hackers

Indie hackers ship small products fast and want the entity layer to disappear into the background. A Wyoming LLC does exactly that: it is the cheapest credible US structure to form, the cheapest to keep alive year after year, and it plugs straight into Stripe, Mercury, the App Store, and every other US rail your micro-SaaS, info product, or extension depends on.

Why indie-hackers form a Wyoming LLC

For a non-US founder, the products you build are easy. The plumbing underneath them is where the friction lives. Stripe wants a real business with a verifiable address and tax ID. The Apple App Store and Google Play want a legal seller with a US bank for payouts. Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, and Gumroad want know-your-customer details before they release money. Trying to do all of this as an individual in your home country means slower approvals, frozen payouts, and currency haircuts on every transfer.

A Wyoming LLC fixes the plumbing without bloating your cost base. You get a US legal entity, an EIN, and a US business bank account. That combination is what Stripe US, Mercury, and the major app marketplaces are actually checking for. Once it exists, approvals that used to bounce go through, payouts land in dollars, and you stop losing 3 to 5 percent to forced currency conversion on every payout cycle.

Indie hackers specifically choose Wyoming over Delaware because the economics match a bootstrapped product. Delaware via Stripe Atlas forms a C-corporation, which is the right structure if you plan to raise venture capital and issue stock options, but it carries a $300 minimum annual franchise tax, more complex annual filings, and corporate-level tax mechanics you do not need when you are a solo founder keeping all the upside (Stripe Atlas, Delaware franchise tax docs). Wyoming charges no state income tax, no franchise tax, and the annual report is a single online filing. Wyoming statute (Title 17, Chapter 29, the Wyoming Limited Liability Company Act) also gives strong charging-order protection and does not publish member names in the public record.

The other reason is operational simplicity. Most indie hackers run two to five tiny products at once. A Wyoming LLC lets all of them sit under one entity, one EIN, one bank account, and one annual tax filing. You are not paying registered-agent fees and filing separate returns for a Notion template shop, a Chrome extension, and a side SaaS. One $397 entity holds the lot, and your year-2 cost is roughly $160. That is the whole pitch: a real US business that costs less than one month of a typical SaaS hosting bill to maintain.

There is also a credibility dimension that matters more than founders expect. When you pitch a B2B SaaS to a US company, sign up for higher-tier affiliate programs, or apply to an ad network or sponsorship marketplace, the counterparty checks whether they are dealing with a registered business. An LLC with an EIN and a US bank reads as a real company. An individual PayPal address in a country the platform flags for risk does not. The entity is not just a tax wrapper — it is the thing that lets a one-person product get treated like a business by the platforms that gatekeep your revenue.

Cost

The headline price is $397 all-inclusive, and the Wyoming state filing fee is already inside that number. There is no separate state fee to discover at checkout. ITIN, if you need one for a tax treaty claim, is a separate $297 add-on and is optional for most founders.

Over three years, a Wyoming LLC runs roughly $397 + $160 + $160 = about $717 in core entity cost. The equivalent Delaware path through Atlas runs about $500 setup plus roughly $400 per year, landing near $1,700 for the same period before any CPA fees (Stripe Atlas pricing). For a bootstrapped product that has not raised a dollar, that $1,000 difference is real runway.

The exact setup stack for indie-hackers

Here is the stack that actually works end to end for a non-US indie hacker, in build order.

1. Wyoming LLC. Formed under the Wyoming LLC Act. This is the legal seller of record for your products and the entity Stripe, Apple, and your bank attach to. Single-member is standard for a solo founder.

2. EIN. Filed on IRS Form SS-4. As a non-US founder with no SSN, you cannot use the instant online tool, so the EIN comes by fax or mail and typically takes a week or two. Everything downstream — bank account, Stripe, App Store payouts — needs this number.

3. US business bank. Mercury or Relay for a true US account and routing number, or Wise Business if you want strong multi-currency. This is where Stripe and marketplace payouts land. More on the fit below.

4. Payment processor or platform. This is the indie-hacker-specific choice, and it depends on what you sell:

• Stripe US for direct SaaS billing and checkout. With an LLC and EIN, Stripe US approval is typically straightforward, and you get Stripe Billing, metered usage, and BNPL options (Klarna, Afterpay, Affirm) for higher-priced US checkouts. The trade-off: you are the seller of record, so sales tax and EU VAT are your responsibility.
• Lemon Squeezy or Paddle if you want a merchant of record instead. As MoR, Lemon Squeezy (now part of Stripe) calculates, collects, and remits sales tax, VAT, and GST across 135+ countries and deducts it from your payout, so you never register for a tax ID or file a VAT return (Lemon Squeezy merchant-of-record docs). For a solo founder selling globally, this removes the single most annoying piece of compliance.
• Gumroad for one-shot digital goods, ebooks, and templates — also handles tax as MoR.
• App Store Connect / Google Play Console if you ship mobile apps. Both require a legal entity and a US bank for clean USD payouts, and Apple takes a developer account under the LLC.
• Marketplaces and ad networks — Amazon Seller Central, YouTube/AdSense, Patreon, Twitch, Upwork — all pay an LLC + US bank far more reliably than an individual foreign account, and an EIN on file reduces default withholding.

5. Accounting tool. Keep it cheap and clean: Wave (free) or QuickBooks/Xero if you want more. Stripe and Mercury both export clean CSVs, and Mercury integrates directly with most bookkeeping tools. The goal is a single profit-and-loss view across all your products so that your year-end Form 5472 and pro-forma 1120 take an hour, not a weekend.

Running multiple products under one LLC is not just allowed, it is the point. Give each product its own Stripe account under the same LLC for clean per-product revenue, and use Relay sub-accounts if you want bank-level separation per product. One P&L, one filing.

Banking for indie-hackers

Mercury is the default for indie hackers because it was built for exactly this profile: a software business with online revenue and no US physical presence. It is free to open, gives you a real US account and routing number, issues virtual and physical cards for your AWS, Vercel, GitHub, and OpenAI bills, and lets you spin up sub-accounts to ring-fence cash per product. Stripe payouts land natively. Relay is the strong alternative when you want more sub-accounts and granular bookkeeping separation; Wise Business is the pick when a meaningful share of your customers or contractors are outside the US and you want to hold and convert multiple currencies at near-mid-market rates.

What the bank reviewers actually check matters, because indie hackers get tripped up here. Mercury and Relay both run an application review that looks for: a matching LLC name and EIN, a real and specific business description, and a plausible source of revenue. The mistake is writing something vague like "online business." Write what you actually do — "I run a small SaaS product billed through Stripe and sell digital templates through Lemon Squeezy" — and approvals go smoothly. Reviewers also like to see that the entity address and registered agent line up with the formation documents, and they may ask for the formation certificate and EIN letter. Have both PDFs ready. Note that these are fintech platforms partnered with FDIC-member banks rather than chartered banks themselves, which is normal and does not affect deposit insurance on balances held at the partner bank.

A practical note for indie hackers specifically: open the bank account before you connect Stripe, not after. Stripe wants a US bank for payouts, and if you connect Stripe first and route payouts to a foreign account you create currency conversion losses and occasional payout holds. The clean order is LLC, then EIN, then bank, then Stripe pointed at that bank. Keep a small buffer in the account — fintech reviewers sometimes flag an account that takes its first large payout while sitting at a zero balance, and a funded account that has paid a few real software bills looks like a live business rather than a shell. Once you are running, Mercury's free outbound USD wires and ACH let you pay overseas contractors and pull owner draws without the per-transfer fees a traditional bank would charge, which is the kind of small recurring saving that adds up across a year of solo operations.

Tax handling for indie-hackers

A single-member Wyoming LLC owned by a non-US person is, by default, a disregarded entity for US tax. It is pass-through: the LLC itself pays no US income tax, and profits flow to you. If you have no US employees, no US office, and no dependent agent in the US — which describes nearly every remote indie hacker — your software income is generally not effectively connected income (ECI), and there is generally no US federal income tax on it. You still report and pay tax in your country of residence. This is the structural reason the Wyoming LLC is so popular with founders abroad: legitimacy and US rails without a US tax bill on foreign-earned software revenue.

The compliance you cannot skip is the information return. A foreign-owned single-member LLC must file Form 5472 attached to a pro-forma Form 1120 every year, even with zero income and even if it only received an initial capital contribution. The penalty for missing it, filing late, or filing one half without the other is $25,000 per year, with an additional $25,000 for each 30-day period the failure continues after IRS notice (IRS, Instructions for Form 5472, IRC §6038A). For 2025 transactions the filing is due April 15, 2026. This is the single most common and most expensive mistake in this group — people assume small revenue means no filing. It does not. The $99 add-on handles it.

Deductible business expenses for an indie hacker are exactly the costs you already pay: hosting (AWS, Vercel, Railway), API usage (OpenAI, Anthropic), domains, GitHub, design tools, Stripe/Paddle fees, contractor payments, and a share of software subscriptions. Run them through the LLC card so they are documented.

Two reporting items to keep straight. First, the 1099-K threshold for 2026 is $20,000 and 200 transactions, not $600 — the One Big Beautiful Bill Act repealed the planned $600 rule in July 2025 and reverted to the pre-2021 threshold (IRS, 1099-K FAQs under OBBB). A 1099-K is informational and does not itself create a tax liability. Second, if you ever take crypto payouts, brokers began issuing Form 1099-DA for gross proceeds on 2025 transactions, with cost-basis reporting phasing in for 2026 transactions (IRS, final digital-asset broker regulations) — so keep records if any product revenue arrives in crypto.

Step-by-step

1. Pick your entity name and confirm availability. Check the Wyoming Secretary of State business database so your chosen LLC name is free before filing.
2. Order the $397 package. This files your Wyoming LLC under the Wyoming LLC Act, includes the state fee, provides a registered agent for year one, and produces a custom operating agreement for single-member operation.
3. Get your EIN. We submit Form SS-4 to the IRS on your behalf with no SSN required. Expect roughly 8 to 10 business days for the EIN confirmation.
4. Open the US bank account. Take your formation certificate and EIN letter to Mercury, Relay, or Wise Business via our direct introductions. Write a specific, honest business description on the application.
5. Connect your processor or platform. Set up Stripe US for direct billing, or Lemon Squeezy/Paddle/Gumroad if you want a merchant of record to handle global tax. Add App Store Connect or Google Play if you ship apps. Point all payouts at your US bank.
6. Set up bookkeeping. Connect Wave, QuickBooks, or Xero to Mercury and Stripe. Keep one P&L across all products. Pay yourself by owner draw from the LLC account to your personal account — never spend personal costs from the business account.
7. Launch products under the one LLC. Give each product its own Stripe account if you want separate revenue tracking, and use Relay sub-accounts for bank-level separation. No need for separate entities.
8. File annually. Submit the Wyoming annual report (about $60, five minutes online) and your Form 5472 + pro-forma 1120 by April 15. Use the $99 add-on if you want it handled.

Common mistakes indie-hackers make

• Forming a separate LLC for every product. Each extra entity adds a registered-agent fee and a separate tax filing. One Wyoming LLC can hold 5, 10, or 20 micro-products. Consolidate.
• Defaulting to Delaware on YC-playbook advice. Delaware C-corp is built for venture fundraising and stock options. If you are bootstrapping and keeping the upside, you are paying franchise tax and corporate complexity for nothing. Wyoming fits the bootstrapped indie path; you can convert later in the rare case you raise.
• Skipping Form 5472 because revenue is small. This is the $25,000 mistake. The filing is mandatory regardless of income, including a year with only a capital contribution.
• Being vague on the bank application. "Online business" gets you a review hold. Describe the actual products and revenue rails and approval is routine.
• Not deducting software and API costs. Hosting, API usage, subscriptions, and processor fees are all legitimate business expenses. Run them through the LLC card and capture the deduction.
• Assuming the $600 1099-K rule still applies. It was repealed; the 2026 threshold is $20,000 and 200 transactions. Do not over-engineer around a rule that no longer exists.
• Treating MoR and direct Stripe as the same. If you bill direct through Stripe US, EU VAT and US sales tax are your job. If global tax compliance scares you, use Lemon Squeezy or Paddle as merchant of record and let them remit it.

Sources: IRS — Instructions for Form 5472, IRS — 1099-K FAQs under the One Big Beautiful Bill, IRS — Final regulations for digital-asset broker reporting (Form 1099-DA), Lemon Squeezy — Merchant of Record docs, Stripe Atlas — pricing and Delaware franchise tax.