Wyoming LLC for Online Course Creators

Selling an online course as a non-US founder is mostly a payments problem disguised as a content problem: Teachable, Thinkific, and Kajabi all settle through Stripe, and Stripe pays cleanest into a US LLC with an EIN and a US bank account. This playbook shows how to actually run that course business end-to-end through a Wyoming LLC.

The founder pain online-courses solves with a US LLC

If you build courses from Lagos, Lahore, Manila, or Buenos Aires, you hit the same wall the moment you try to collect money: the platforms you want to use are built around US payment rails. Teachable processes student purchases through Stripe, Thinkific runs its native "Thinkific Payments" on a Stripe-powered backend, and Kajabi settles card payments through Stripe as well. Stripe, in turn, strongly prefers a registered business, a tax ID, and a bank account in a country it fully supports. As a non-resident individual, you are often stuck with a half-supported Stripe entity in your home country, higher payout friction, frozen balances during review, or outright ineligibility for the platform's integrated checkout.

The second pain is credibility. When a student in the US or EU pays $499 for a cohort, the receipt, the invoice, and the merchant descriptor all matter. "Paid to [random individual, home country]" reads differently than "Paid to [Your Brand] LLC." A US LLC gives your course brand a clean legal wrapper, a consistent business name on statements, and an entity that can sign affiliate agreements, sponsorship deals, and platform terms.

The third pain is money fragmentation. Course revenue rarely comes from one source. You have platform checkout, a direct Stripe link for high-ticket cohorts, a Gumroad or Lemon Squeezy storefront for digital downloads, affiliate payouts from networks, and maybe YouTube ad revenue feeding the same brand. Without a US entity and a US business account, each of those becomes its own withholding, FX, and reconciliation headache. A Wyoming LLC with an EIN lets you point all of them at one USD account and one set of books.

There is also a quieter pain: privacy and continuity. Wyoming does not list member names in its public filings, so your home address and identity are not exposed on a government website attached to a public course brand. And because the LLC, not you personally, holds the Stripe account, the platform logins, and the bank, the business can survive a change in your personal banking, a move to another country, or a partner joining later. For a creator whose entire livelihood runs through a handful of US-facing accounts, that durability is worth as much as the tax treatment.

The exact setup stack for online-courses

Here is the concrete, tool-specific stack a course creator actually needs. Note that the course platform (Teachable/Thinkific/Kajabi) is a content and checkout tool, not your accounting tool. Your accounting tool is separate.

1. Wyoming LLC — $397, all-inclusive. This is the legal entity that owns the brand, signs the platform Terms of Service, and holds the bank account. The $397 includes the Wyoming Secretary of State filing fee and one year of registered agent service. Per the Wyoming Secretary of State, the LLC must maintain a registered agent in-state and file an annual report — both handled inside this package.

2. EIN — filed for you, no SSN required (8-10 business days). The Employer Identification Number is what Stripe, Mercury, Teachable, and Kajabi ask for in the "US tax ID" field. As a foreign founder with no SSN or ITIN, the EIN is obtained by filing Form SS-4 directly with the IRS, which the package handles.

3. US business bank account — Mercury (primary), opened 8-10 days after the EIN. Mercury is the default for course creators because it integrates cleanly with Stripe payouts and gives you USD ACH and wire details. If Mercury declines, the fallback ladder is Relay, then Wise Business (the broadest-acceptance option for almost any country of residence).

4. Payment processor — Stripe (US). This is the engine under every major course platform. With a US LLC + EIN + US bank account, Stripe approves a US Stripe account, which is what unlocks Teachable, Thinkific Payments, and Kajabi's integrated checkout at full functionality. Per Thinkific's documentation, Thinkific Payments is Stripe-powered and built specifically for education businesses.

5. Course platform — Teachable, Thinkific, or Kajabi. This hosts the curriculum, runs the checkout, handles drip content, and issues student receipts. Choose one: Teachable for simple course-plus-coaching, Thinkific for scale and bundles, Kajabi for an all-in-one with email and funnels. All three connect to your Stripe/US account.

6. Accounting/ops tools. Use Wave (free) or QuickBooks Online for bookkeeping and the year-end 1120/5472 prep, and a payout/FX layer where needed:

   • Wave or QuickBooks Online — categorize Stripe payouts, platform fees, contractor payments, and software costs; export a P&L your CPA uses for the pro-forma 1120.
   • Stripe Tax — auto-calculates and collects sales tax/VAT on digital course sales where you have obligations (EU VAT on B2C digital goods, US state economic nexus).
   • Wise Business — for paying overseas contractors (editors, VAs, course designers) at the real exchange rate, and as a banking fallback.
   • Gumroad or Lemon Squeezy — optional second storefront; Lemon Squeezy acts as a merchant of record and handles global VAT for you, useful for low-ticket digital downloads.

This stack is deliberately minimal: one entity, one tax ID, one bank, one processor, one platform, one ledger. Everything else plugs into those.

Cost

The headline numbers are $397 to launch and roughly $160/year to keep the entity alive, before transaction and platform fees that scale only when you make sales.

Banking + money flow for online-courses

The money flow for a course business is a loop: students pay in, fees come out, you sweep profit out. Here is how it actually moves.

In. A student buys your course on Teachable. Teachable's checkout charges the card through Stripe. Stripe collects the gross amount, deducts its processing fee (2.9% + $0.30) and any platform fee, and deposits the net into your Mercury account on a rolling payout schedule (typically daily or every 2 days once your account is seasoned). Direct high-ticket sales — say a $2,000 cohort sold over a Stripe Payment Link — land in the same Mercury account, so all revenue consolidates in one place.

Mercury is the recommended primary because it was built for startups and non-resident founders, supports USD ACH and domestic/international wires, and pairs naturally with Stripe payouts. If your application is declined, Relay is the next try, and Wise Business is the universal fallback because it has the broadest country coverage and gives you USD, EUR, and GBP receiving details — handy if you also sell into Europe.

Out. From Mercury you pay your real operating costs directly: the course platform subscription, your email tool, ad spend, and software. To pay overseas contractors — a video editor in Egypt, a VA in the Philippines — route those through Wise Business from Mercury, because Wise gives the contractor the mid-market exchange rate instead of the 3-4% spread a normal wire costs. When you want to take profit home, you do an owner's draw: a transfer from the LLC's Mercury account to your personal account abroad. For a single-member disregarded LLC, an owner's draw is not a taxable "salary" event — it is simply moving your own pass-through profit, though you should document it.

Reserves and refunds. Course businesses have a refund window — most platforms run a 14- or 30-day money-back guarantee. That means Stripe can claw a payout back after it has already hit Mercury. Keep a small buffer in the account (a rough rule is one to two weeks of expected refunds) so a cluster of refunds during a launch never overdraws operating cash. Stripe may also hold a rolling reserve on a new account until it sees a clean dispute history; plan your first month assuming payouts arrive a few days slower than steady state.

The discipline that makes this work: never run course money through a personal account, and never mix a personal expense into the LLC account. Clean separation is what keeps the liability shield intact and makes the year-end 5472 reconcilable. A practical habit is a monthly close — on the first of each month, reconcile Stripe payouts against Mercury deposits in Wave, confirm every line is categorized, and move the prior month's profit to your draw. Twelve clean monthly closes turn the year-end CPA bill into a 30-minute job instead of a forensic reconstruction.

Tax handling for online-courses

A single-member Wyoming LLC owned by a non-resident is, by default, a disregarded entity for US income tax — a pass-through. The LLC itself pays no federal income tax; profit "passes through" to you, the owner.

The mandatory filing. Even though it is disregarded, a foreign-owned single-member LLC must file Form 5472 attached to a pro-forma Form 1120 every year. This is informational, not a tax bill — but the penalty for missing it is severe. Per the IRS instructions for Form 5472 and IRC §6038A, the penalty is $25,000 per form for failure to file or for a substantially incomplete filing, with additional $25,000 increments if non-compliance continues after IRS notice. This applies even in a year where the only "reportable transaction" was your initial capital contribution. File it on time regardless of revenue.

US tax on the income. Whether you owe US income tax turns on whether your course income is "effectively connected to a US trade or business" (ECI) and whether you have a US presence. Many non-resident course creators with no US office, employees, or dependent agents take the position that their income is not ECI and therefore not subject to US federal income tax — but this is fact-specific. Selling digital courses to US buyers from abroad is a gray area; consult a US CPA before relying on it.

Deductible expenses specific to course creators. Against your course revenue you can deduct: Stripe and platform processing fees, your Teachable/Thinkific/Kajabi subscription, video production and editing costs, course-design contractors, your email and funnel software, paid advertising, screen-recording and design software, stock assets and music licenses, microphone and camera gear used for recording, affiliate commissions you pay out, and the LLC's own upkeep (registered agent, annual report, CPA fees). The reason clean bookkeeping matters here is leverage: if you are ever found to have ECI, your tax is computed on net profit, and every legitimate expense you tracked is a dollar that is not taxed. The creator who treats Wave seriously from month one pays less than the one who reconstructs receipts in April.

1099 reality. You may receive a Form 1099-K from Stripe. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025, the threshold reverted to more than $20,000 AND more than 200 transactions — the planned $600 rule was repealed. Per the IRS Form 1099-K FAQs, the dollar limit reverts to $20,000. A 1099-K is informational and does not by itself create US tax — but keep your own Wave/QuickBooks records so the numbers reconcile.

Step-by-step from zero to operating

1. Order the Wyoming LLC ($397). Pick your brand name, confirm availability, and file. The entity is formed in about 24 hours by the Wyoming Secretary of State.

2. EIN filing begins. Form SS-4 is filed with the IRS without an SSN. Expect the EIN in 8-10 business days. This is the gating item — almost nothing downstream works without it.

3. Open Mercury. With the formation docs and EIN, apply to Mercury (8-10 days after the EIN). If declined, apply to Relay, then Wise Business. Get USD ACH and wire details.

4. Create your Stripe account. Use the LLC's legal name, EIN, and Mercury account/routing numbers. With a complete US stack, Stripe typically approves quickly.

5. Set up the course platform. Connect Teachable, Thinkific, or Kajabi to your Stripe/US account. Set the merchant descriptor to your brand. Turn on Stripe Tax if you have VAT/sales-tax obligations.

6. Build the offer and a checkout. Upload the course, set pricing, and create at least one Stripe Payment Link for direct high-ticket sales outside the platform.

7. Wire up accounting. Connect Mercury and Stripe to Wave or QuickBooks Online so payouts and fees auto-import from day one.

8. Launch and take first revenue. Drive traffic, make the first sale, and confirm the full loop: card charged in Stripe, net deposited to Mercury, transaction categorized in Wave.

9. Calendar the compliance. Set reminders for the Wyoming annual report and the April 15 Form 5472 + pro-forma 1120. Engage a CPA before year one closes.

Realistic timeline: 3-4 weeks from order to first dollar collected, with the EIN and bank approvals being the long poles.

Common mistakes

Treating the course platform as your bookkeeping. Teachable shows gross sales, not your real P&L. It does not track contractor payments, ad spend, or FX. Use Wave or QuickBooks as your actual ledger — the raw setup record that called Teachable an "accounting tool" is wrong, and copying that mistake will wreck your year-end numbers.

Skipping Form 5472. The single most expensive error a foreign-owned LLC can make. The form is informational and often shows no tax due, but failing to file it triggers a $25,000 penalty. File it every year, even a zero-revenue year.

Mixing personal and business money. Paying a personal subscription from the Mercury account, or letting course revenue hit your personal account, pierces the liability shield and makes the 5472 a nightmare to reconcile. Keep one clean business account.

Assuming a 1099-K means you owe US tax. It does not. It is informational. Conversely, do not assume no 1099-K means no filing obligation — the 5472 is required regardless of whether any 1099 arrives.

Opening Stripe before the bank. Stripe wants real US bank details. Founders who rush Stripe with incomplete information get flagged and delayed. Follow the order: LLC, EIN, bank, then Stripe.

Ignoring sales tax / VAT on digital goods. Selling courses to EU consumers can create VAT obligations from the first sale. Turn on Stripe Tax or use a merchant-of-record storefront (Lemon Squeezy) so this is handled before it becomes a back-tax problem.