When to get a new EIN

If you have an EIN as a sole proprietor or household employer, use that EIN for care you receive in your home. Don’t get a new EIN.

Get a new EIN if you:

• Incorporate.
• Form a partnership.
• Declare bankruptcy.

You don’t need a new EIN if you:

• Change your business name or locations.
• Own multiple businesses.

Get a new EIN if you:

• Get a new charter for a corporation from the secretary of state.
• Are a corporation’s subsidiary.
• Change to a partnership or a sole proprietorship.
• Merge and create a new corporation.

You don’t need a new EIN if you:

• Change your business name or location.
• Declare bankruptcy.
• Are a division of a corporation.
• Are the surviving corporation after a corporate merger.
• Choose to be taxed as an S corporation.
• Reorganize to change only your identity or location.
• Convert at the state level and don’t change your business structure.

Get a new EIN if you:

• Incorporate.
• Take over a partnership to operate as a sole proprietor.
• End a partnership and begin a new one.

You don’t need a new EIN if you:

• Change your name or location.
• Declare bankruptcy.
• Undergo a change in ownership that does not result in the termination of the partnership.

Get a new EIN if you:

• Terminate an existing LLC and form a new corporation or partnership.
• Own a single-member LLC and have to file excise or employment taxes.

You don’t need a new EIN if you:

• Change your name or location.
• Report income tax as a branch or division of another entity and you don’t have employees or owe excise tax.
• Convert a partnership to an LLC classified as a partnership.
• Change your tax election to a corporation or an S corporation.
• Use your sole proprietor EIN for your single-member LLC and don’t choose to be taxed as a corporation or an S corporation and don’t have employees or owe excise tax.

Get a new EIN if you:

• Create a trust with estate funds (not simply a continuation of the estate). The new EIN will be for the trust.
• Represent an estate that operates a business that is not a legal entity separate from its owner (sole proprietorship) after the owner's death. The new EIN will be for the business.

You don’t need a new EIN if you:

• Change the name or address of the administrator, personal representative or executor.

Get a new EIN if you:

• Are the grantor of many trusts. Generally, you will need an EIN for each trust.
• Change to an estate. The new EIN will be for the estate.
• Change a living or inter vivos trust to a testamentary trust.
• Terminate a living trust by distributing its property to a residual trust.
• Have a revocable trust that changes to an irrevocable trust.

You don’t need a new EIN if you:

• Change the trustee.
• Change the grantor or beneficiary name or address.