Short answer
Start by separating two situations that look identical from where you sit. Either the IRS never processed your Form SS-4, or it issued your EIN and the CP 575 notice never reached you. The fix for the first is to follow up. The fix for the second is a Letter 147C, not a new application. This matters because the IRS says an EIN, once assigned, becomes that entity's permanent federal taxpayer ID number and is never cancelled, so a second filing does not replace the first one, it adds to it. The IRS publishes a 4-business-day window for a faxed SS-4 and about 4 weeks for a mailed one, and it attaches one condition to the fax window in its own manual, that the application is complete. If you are an international applicant, there is also a channel the first page of search results will not tell you about: the IRS assigns EINs by phone at +1 267-941-1099, and its instructions say the representative assigns the number during the call.
Key takeaways
- An EIN is permanent. The IRS states that once it assigns an EIN to an entity, that number becomes the entity's permanent federal taxpayer ID and is never cancelled, only deactivated by written request. Refiling is therefore not a retry, it is an addition you cannot undo.
- The IRS runs a dedicated procedure for consolidating multiple EINs on one business, which tells you plainly that duplicates happen and that untangling them is somebody's job. Its guidance for founders who end up with more than one EIN is to call 800-829-4933.
- The phone line that actually issues an EIN is +1 267-941-1099, and the Instructions for Form SS-4 restrict telephone issuance to international applicants. The 800 number that every top search result recommends is a domestic toll-free line for account questions, and it does not assign EINs to anyone.
- If the EIN was already issued, the CP 575 is gone for good. The IRS says that notice cannot be duplicated or recreated. The replacement is a Letter 147C, and if the address on file is wrong, Form 8822-B has to clear first or the replacement is mailed to the same place that already failed.
- The digital CP 575 that newer guides recommend is real, but it lives behind a Business Tax Account, which requires an SSN or ITIN and, for a single-member LLC, restricts access to those filing Form 1120-S or 1065. Foreign-owned disregarded LLCs are the exact group that cannot walk through that door.
Before you start
- Find your fax transmission report before you do anything else. It is the only evidence you have of what you sent, when, and to which number, and every conversation below goes better with it in front of you.
- Check which fax number you used. The IRS routes international applicants to its EIN International Operation, at +1 855-215-1627 from inside the US or +1 304-707-9471 from outside it, and the domestic line is a different number entirely.
- Confirm what address you wrote on line 4a, because if the EIN was issued, that is where the confirmation went, and whether it could arrive there decides which of the two problems you actually have.
You Have One of Two Problems, and They Have Opposite Answers
The message from the IRS is the same either way: no record. What sits behind that sentence is not the same at all, and the difference decides everything you do next.
In the first case, the application genuinely has not been processed. It is sitting in a queue, or it arrived incomplete, or it went to a line that does not handle your kind of applicant. Nothing has been assigned. Following up is the correct move, and following up is all you need.
In the second case, your EIN exists. It was assigned, and the CP 575 notice confirming it was mailed to the address on line 4a of your form. If that address could not receive it, the number is real and only the paper is missing. Here, filing again is not a retry. It is a request for a second EIN on a business that already has one.
This is why the order matters
The IRS is unusually blunt about permanence: once an EIN is assigned to an entity, it becomes that entity's permanent federal taxpayer ID number. There is no cancellation, only deactivation of the account by written request. Every other mistake in this process is recoverable. This one follows the company.
What the First Page of Google Tells You, and What the Instructions Say
Search this problem and the results agree with each other with impressive unanimity. Call 800-829-4933, they say, and check on your EIN. The featured answer says it. The People Also Ask box says it. The forum answers say it.
They are not making it up. That is the Business and Specialty Tax Line, it is toll-free, it runs weekdays 7am to 7pm in your local time, and it does handle EIN questions. If you have lost an EIN that was already issued, or you have ended up with two of them, the IRS itself points you there.
What none of them mention is that the 800 line does not assign EINs. Telephone issuance is not a general service the IRS offers and then denies to foreigners. It is a service that exists only for international applicants, and it runs on a different number. The Instructions for Form SS-4 put it in one sentence: only international applicants can receive an EIN by telephone. The number is +1 267-941-1099, it is not toll-free, it takes calls Monday to Friday from 6am to 11pm Eastern, and the instructions say the representative uses the information from your Form SS-4 to establish the account and assign the EIN during the call.
| Channel | Who it is for | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| +1 267-941-1099 | International applicants | Assigns an EIN during the call. Not toll-free. Mon to Fri, 6am to 11pm ET. |
| 800-829-4933 | Domestic callers, toll-free | Account questions, a lost EIN, or sorting out more than one EIN. Does not assign EINs. |
| Fax: +1 855-215-1627 (US) / +1 304-707-9471 (outside US) | Applicants with no US legal residence or principal place of business | EIN returned by fax, generally within 4 business days if the application is complete. |
| Mail: EIN International Operation, Cincinnati OH 45999 | Applicants without fax access | About 4 weeks. The IRS tells you to start 4 to 5 weeks before you need the number. |
The IRS channels, and what each one is actually for. Numbers and hours from irs.gov, retrieved July 2026.
A caution about what happened to you
If you called and were turned away, that is worth knowing but it is not a rule. The IRS does not publish a policy of refusing non-residents on the 800 line, and one call is not a policy. What the instructions do establish is where telephone issuance lives, and it is not on the 800 number.
Why "No Record" Is Hard to Read
The honest answer to what no record means is that the IRS does not tell you, and the silence is the problem rather than a detail of it.
The published window for a faxed EIN is generally 4 business days. The internal manual repeats it with a condition attached that the public page leaves out: if the application is complete, the EIN is faxed back within 4 business days. What happens when it is not complete is not written down anywhere you can read. There is no bounce, no rejection notice, no letter explaining what went wrong.
So the same sentence, no record of your application, can sit on top of an application still in a queue, one that was set aside as incomplete, or one that went to a fax line that does not serve you. You cannot tell them apart from the outside, and you should be suspicious of any guide that tells you it can, including guides that state confidently that a misrouted fax is destroyed. That claim appears in a lot of places. It does not appear on irs.gov.
What you can do is narrow it. Your fax transmission report tells you the number you reached and the moment it answered. Line 7b tells you whether the application was routed as foreign, which is the single most common reason a foreign founder's form is set aside. And the address on line 4a tells you whether a successful assignment could have reached you at all.
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The Move You Cannot Take Back
Three weeks of silence produces a strong and reasonable instinct: send it again. Plenty of advice online agrees, including a highly ranked forum answer that tells foreign founders in this exact situation to start over.
Here is the asymmetry that advice ignores. If your form was never processed, refiling costs you nothing but more waiting. If it was processed, refiling asks for a second EIN on a business that already has one, and the IRS does not undo that. It maintains an internal procedure for consolidating multiple EINs on a single business, with separate paths depending on whether returns have been filed under one number, both, or neither. Procedures like that exist because the situation is common enough to need one.
You will not usually produce a duplicate on the same day, because the IRS limits a responsible party to one EIN per day. Weeks later is a different matter, and weeks later is exactly where you are standing.
The safe sequence
Confirm before you resend. If you are an international applicant, the phone line at +1 267-941-1099 is the fastest way to establish whether a number already exists, because the people who answer it work on EIN assignment. Refiling is a last resort, taken after you know the first application produced nothing, not while you are still guessing.
If the EIN Already Exists, the Letter Is Gone but the Number Is Not
Suppose the call establishes that your EIN was assigned weeks ago and the confirmation went to an address that could not receive it. Now you need the paper, and this is where a small vocabulary problem does real damage.
The CP 575 is not reissued. The IRS states that the original CP 575 series notice cannot be duplicated or recreated. It is a one-time document, and asking for another copy of it is asking for something that does not exist.
What replaces it is a Letter 147C, the EIN verification letter, which the IRS issues precisely so that a business can prove its EIN after the original notice is gone. It is a Letter, not a Form, and it is worth using the exact phrase when you ask for it. Banks and payment processors generally treat it as equivalent proof, which is the whole reason it exists.
One ordering rule governs everything here. A mailed 147C goes to the address the IRS has on file, which in this scenario is the address that already failed to deliver once. Form 8822-B updates that record. If the address is wrong, 8822-B has to clear before a mailed 147C is worth requesting, or you will simply repeat the same failure with a different letter. Our walkthrough of that sequence is in the 147C guide.
The Digital CP 575 That Is Not Open to You
Newer articles have started recommending a cleaner path: skip the letters, open a Business Tax Account, and download a digital CP 575. The IRS is genuinely building this, and for a domestic business it is good advice.
Read the access requirements and the door closes. A Business Tax Account requires an individual account, which requires an SSN or an ITIN. And for single-member LLCs, access is limited to those that file Form 1120-S or Form 1065.
Look at who that excludes. A foreign-owned single-member LLC, treated as a disregarded entity, is precisely the business whose owner has no SSN and whose federal filing is Form 5472 with a pro forma 1120 rather than an 1120-S or 1065. If you are reading this because your SS-4 went out by international fax, the digital CP 575 is the one solution written specifically not to include you. That is not a reason to be angry at the advice. It is a reason to stop trying that door and use the 147C path instead.
Where the Address Quietly Decides This
Notice how much of the above turns on one field. Line 4a is where the CP 575 goes. It is the record a mailed 147C is sent to. It is the thing Form 8822-B exists to correct.
A founder abroad usually fills that field with whatever US address was available at the time, which is often a friend's apartment, a former coworking desk, or a service that was cancelled once formation was done. Each of those can stop receiving mail without telling anyone, and the IRS does not report a failed delivery back to you. It simply looks, from your side, like nothing arrived. Which is the sentence you started with.
So before you file 8822-B and request the replacement, make sure the address you are about to put on it will still be receiving mail in six months, and that it can actually take government correspondence. save office runs real commercial addresses in six US cities, with mail scanned the day it lands, and a new address is live within 24 hours, which matters when the whole problem is that a letter has nowhere to go. If you are unsure about an address you already have, the address checker will tell you how it is classified before you commit it to a federal form.
Not legal or tax advice
This article is general information, not legal or tax advice. IRS procedures and phone numbers change. Verify against irs.gov, and speak to a qualified tax professional about your own situation.
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Published July 14, 2026
I'm Henry, a hedgehog in a bow tie who explains the dull, scary parts of building and running a U.S. business.
