Lost Your EIN? The 147C Letter
Misplaced your company's federal tax ID number? Good news: it isn't really lost, and you don't have to reapply. Here's where the number is already hiding, how the IRS confirms it in writing with a 147C letter, how to get one from abroad — and the shortcuts that don't work.
First, your EIN is not lost — just misfiled
An EIN (Employer Identification Number) is the nine-digit federal tax ID assigned to your company. Once the IRS gives your business a number, that number belongs to it permanently — it is never reassigned, never expires, and you never need a new one just because you can't find the paperwork. So the real task is not "get a new EIN," it's "prove to a bank, a marketplace, or a payment processor what the existing number is." Before you spend an hour on the phone, check the places the number is almost certainly already written down.
Where your EIN is hiding
Nine times out of ten, the number is sitting in a document you already have. Look through:
- The original CP-575 notice — the confirmation letter (or PDF) the IRS produced the moment your EIN was issued.
- Your business bank account paperwork — the EIN is recorded on the application you signed to open the account.
- Any past tax filing — a prior Form 1120, Form 5472, or payroll return shows it at the top.
- Payment-processor and marketplace sign-ups — Stripe, PayPal, Amazon, and similar accounts store the EIN you entered.
- The email from your formation service — if a company set your business up, the EIN is usually in their welcome message or dashboard.
If you find it in any of these, you're done — no IRS call needed. You only need the IRS itself when a bank or agency insists on an official IRS document that states the number.
CP-575 vs 147C — the important difference
These two letters both confirm your EIN, but they are not the same thing, and the distinction matters. The CP-575 is the original confirmation — the IRS issues it exactly once, when your EIN is first assigned, and it is never reprinted. If you lost the CP-575, stop looking for a replacement copy of it; one does not exist. Instead, the IRS issues a 147C letter (officially an "EIN Verification Letter"). The 147C confirms the identical number and is accepted by banks and agencies in place of a CP-575 you can no longer find. Think of the CP-575 as the birth certificate you only get once, and the 147C as the certified copy you can request later.
How to get a 147C: call the IRS
A 147C is requested by phone — there is no online button for it. You call the IRS Business & Specialty Tax Line, confirm your identity as a person authorized to speak for the company, and ask for an EIN verification letter. The IRS will not email it (a security rule), so they send it two ways: by fax while you're still on the call, which is instant, or by mail, which typically takes a couple of weeks and can stretch to a month or more if you're overseas. If you have any way to receive a fax — including an online fax service — take the fax; it turns a multi-week wait into minutes.
Calling as an international founder
For founders outside the US, two practical things trip people up. First, the domestic toll-free number won't dial from abroad; as of 2026 the IRS runs a separate international line for business callers that is not toll-free, so budget for the call cost and a long hold. Second, the line keeps US business hours in the Eastern time zone, which may be the middle of your night — plan the call for your daytime that overlaps theirs. When you get through, the agent will verify you are an owner or officer (or an authorized third party) before releasing anything, so have the company's legal name, address, and any details from its formation on hand.
Let someone call for you: the third-party designee
You don't have to make the call yourself. With a signed authorization on file — commonly Form 8821 (Tax Information Authorization) or a power of attorney — your CPA can call the IRS, pass the identity checks, and have the 147C faxed over the same day. For an international owner facing a not-toll-free number, an inconvenient time zone, and an English-language phone tree, handing the whole errand to an authorized representative is usually the fastest and least painful route. This is exactly the kind of small administrative wall that our US market-entry service takes off your plate.
What does NOT work
A few dead ends worth naming so you don't waste time. As of 2026, there is no public online lookup where you can type in your company name and retrieve its EIN — the IRS does not offer one. You cannot get a second copy of the CP-575 — the 147C is the only reissue. The IRS will not email or text your number, so any site or message offering to "instantly recover your EIN online" for a fee is not the IRS and should be treated with suspicion. And a formation company or unrelated third party cannot pull your number without a signed authorization from you.
What we handle for you
We confirm whether the number is already in your own records first — often it is — and if you genuinely need IRS confirmation, we file the authorization, make the call, and get the 147C faxed to you the same day rather than mailed across borders for weeks. If a lost EIN is part of a bigger tidy-up, it usually surfaces alongside missing filings or an unclear entity setup, which is what our free compliance check is built to catch. Tell us what you're missing and we'll track the number down the right way.