Fax Form SS-4 with your own fax number on it and the EIN comes back by fax, generally within four business days

Application for Employer Identification Number. Apply for an EIN. Match your situation to the condition, not to whichever number appears first.

Put your own fax number on the form before you scan it: the IRS faxes the EIN back to it. Fax Form SS-4 from here: upload the pages, then enter the number above whose condition matches yours. FaxMyDoc is a fax service, not the IRS, and is not affiliated with it.

That is faster than anything a fax can do, and we would rather say so than sell you a transmission that costs you three days. Fax is the route when the online session does not fit the application — and when it does not, the numbers above are the ones the IRS publishes.

Leave that field empty and the only advantage the fax route has is gone: there is nowhere for the IRS to send the number, and you are waiting on mail with extra steps.

It applies whichever way you apply, so faxing several applications on one afternoon does not get around it.

Two of the three numbers above are for exactly that case, and which one depends on whether you are faxing from inside the United States or outside it. There is also a telephone route, and it is open only to applicants in that position.

Form 2553 asks for the corporation’s EIN, and its instructions say that a corporation that does not have one must apply for one (Instructions for Form 2553 (opens in a new tab), read 2026-10-03). If that is the sequence you are in, where to fax Form 2553 has that form’s own two numbers and the deadline the election has to be filed by.

If the IRS has written to you, the number on that notice wins. Correspondence routes to the unit handling your case, and that unit’s fax number is not always the one on the public where-to-file page.

The oldest reading on this page is from September 13, 2026. A check in our build fails the site when any reading here passes six months, so a number cannot quietly age on this page. What that does not do is notice the IRS changing a number this morning — which is why the source link and the read date sit under every fact rather than a badge saying the page is verified. The rest of the IRS record is held to the same rule.

Upload the pages, check the preview, and send. No account, nothing to cancel, and the card is authorized when you press send and charged only once the receiving fax system acknowledges the pages. If it never does, you are not charged. A cover sheet is generated with the routing fields filled in from what you entered — and on this form, the fax number you want the EIN sent back to belongs on the SS-4 itself, not only on the cover.

• Where to fax Form 2553, and the deadline that governs it
• Which IRS forms can be faxed, and which cannot
• What a fax confirmation actually proves