What Form 5472 Should Cost, and Why Quotes Vary 100x

TL;DR

In August 2026 we priced the same deliverable — Form 5472 attached to a pro-forma Form 1120 for a foreign-owned single-member LLC — across every channel selling it.

$15 on Fiverr. $50 from a software tool. $405 from an expat tax firm. $899/yr from a formation platform. $1,999/yr from another. $1,500 from a named CPA firm. “Minimum $5,000” according to practitioners on r/Accounting.

That is roughly a 100x spread for identical statutory output. The spread is not hours. It is who carries the risk if it is wrong — and almost nobody says so out loud, which is why buyers cannot tell a fair quote from a bad one.

The observed market, August 2026

All prices below were published on the providers’ own pages on 30 August 2026.

Tier 1 — Self-service software: $0–$199

Guided form builders that produce a filled PDF from what you enter. Free to $149 at the top end, most clustered $50–$149. Some add IRS fax delivery with confirmation for $30–$49 and a reasonable-cause statement for late years.

What you are buying: a correctly formatted document. What you are not buying: anyone forming a view on whether your answers are right.

Tier 2 — Freelance marketplaces: $10–$350

Fiverr gigs for this exact filing, observed today: $10, $15, $20, $40, $60, $75, $80, $120, $200, $250, $350. The mode sits at $60–80. Some sellers hold real credentials; the category page claims over 1,500 services available.

Buyers do report completed filings through this channel. One described shortlisting by price and review count and paying “around $50 total.”

What you are buying: someone’s time on the forms. What varies wildly: whether they will still exist next year when a notice arrives.

Tier 3 — Productized flat-fee services: $275–$899

This is where the honest middle of the market sits, and where most buyers should probably transact.

The cluster is $399–$450. If you need one number for “what this costs,” that is it. Note also that per-form pricing is inconsistent even between reputable firms: 1040 Abroad charges $300 for Form 5472 and $1,000 for Form 1120; Taxes for Expats charges $600 and $1,100. Same two firms, same form, twice apart, with no visible difference in scope.

Tier 4 — Bundled platforms: $249–$1,999/yr

Some platforms will not sell the filing separately. One gates Form 5472 behind a $1,999/yr tier (promotional $1,499) — roughly four to five times the standalone market. Another bundles it at $1,068/yr. A third publishes a $249/yr starter including a return.

Check what the bundle actually includes before treating the tax filing as free. If you already have a registered agent you like, the bundled version can be the most expensive way to buy a $400 service.

Tier 5 — Named US CPA and EA firms: $650–$1,500 advertised

One firm publishes $1,500 for a current year, $2,000 for the first delinquent year and $1,500 for each additional delinquent year, plus $300 per related party. Another starts business returns at $1,500. A third starts small-business tax at $1,000/yr.

Practitioners describing their own floors in professional forums go higher still — “I don’t touch foreign disclosures for less than $1k due to the increased liability” is a representative comment, and “minimum $5k” appears more than once.

The thing nobody publishes

There is no authoritative average fee for Form 5472. The National Society of Accountants fee survey — the closest thing the US profession has to a benchmark — has never broken this form out, and stopped publishing per-form averages publicly after its 2020–2021 edition.

The adjacent figures that do exist, from that 2020–2021 survey restated in current dollars by a third party (so treat them as indicative, not official):

The same survey series in its 2016–17 raw form put Form 1120 at $826 and hourly rates for tax services at $145/hr.

Why this matters to you: the pro-forma 1120 in your filing is a nearly blank form. It is not the $1,169 corporate return those numbers describe. Anyone quoting you a full 1120 price for a pro-forma 1120 is pricing a different product than the one you need.

The real reason for the spread

We read several hundred posts from buyers and preparers discussing this filing. The pattern is remarkably clean, and both sides are describing something true.

Buyers anchor at $500 as already too much:

“I’d rather not pay $500+ just for someone to add a short statement to a form. That price seems excessive for something this simple.”

“Advisor quoted $1500, seems high.”

“Now I’m being quoted $3000+ for CPA filings, and the business hasn’t even traded yet… it’s really starting to feel like I’d need to invest 100k just to break even.”

And the clearest statement of the whole dilemma, from a UK resident with a Wyoming LLC:

“Haven’t been able to find a single one that meets these requirements: is a registered CPA, has good reviews, doesn’t look scammy, doesn’t cost more than $1000 for filing a single flippin’ form… The penalty for messing up is $25,000, so I want something that looks like a safe bet, but also don’t want to pay through the nose.”

Preparers anchor at $1,000 as a floor:

“I would be shocked if you can find this for under $1000. The pro-forma 1120 would have to be incredibly simple and your records would need to be damn near perfect.”

“The CPAs here in the US are not just key punching in the data — they have to ask questions, because you’re not the only one who could get hit with penalties for an erroneous return. Preparer penalties exist in this territory.”

“Unfortunately I don’t think you’ll get someone reputable to do much foreign filings for a low price. The exposure is too high to risk it.”

Neither side is bluffing. They are describing two different products and neither says so.

• What the buyer sees: two forms, mostly blank, thirty minutes of typing.
• What the preparer sees: signing a document about facts they cannot verify, in an area with a $25,000 client penalty and separate preparer penalties, for a client who lives in another country and will be hard to reach if the IRS writes.

That gap is the entire price spread. It is not markup. It is liability transfer, and it is a real thing to buy — or to decline to buy.

One warning about your own research

The single most-shared “outrage” post on this topic — a buyer listing three CPA quotes and asking whether it is normal — was posted by the founder of a competing $30 filing tool, who posted parallel threads to three other subreddits the same day, and later wrote in a builder community: “Built a tax tool so foreign LLC owners stop paying $2,000 to CPAs for a $50 form.”

At least two other accounts pushing the same “CPAs are ripping you off” framing turned out to be service owners; one admitted it after being called out.

Those quotes are marketing, not observed prices. We excluded all of them from the figures above and used only accounts with unrelated posting histories. Mention this to anyone who tells you “everyone on Reddit says $500 is a ripoff.”

How to judge a quote

Ask these five questions. The answers explain almost every price on this page.

1. Who signs as paid preparer? A named individual with a PTIN who signs is taking on preparer liability. A tool that hands you a PDF to sign yourself is not. Both are legitimate; they are not the same purchase.
2. Does the price include getting it to the IRS? This filing cannot be e-filed — it goes by mail or fax. Several services charge $30–$99 for the fax step alone. Sending it yourself through an online fax service costs a few dollars.
3. What happens when the IRS writes? A notice a year later is the moment the price difference becomes visible. Ask explicitly whether responding is included, extra, or not offered.
4. Is there a per-related-party charge? One published rate card adds $300 per related party. If you have two or three, a headline price can double.
5. Are you late? Delinquent years are a different product. They need a reasonable cause statement — which, for Form 5472, must be made under penalties of perjury under 26 CFR 1.6038A-4, and cannot use First-Time Abate. Expect to pay meaningfully more, and be wary of anyone who does not raise it.

Two things that quietly cost people $25,000

Your bookkeeper probably does not file this. Bench, Pilot and Xendoo are US-domestic products, and none of them advertises Form 5472 support. A “year-end tax package” does not cover the foreign-owner filing. Owners who assumed otherwise are a structurally large share of the delinquent population.

The penalty is not proportional to your revenue. $25,000 per form, per related party, per year, with a further $25,000 for each 30-day period after a 90-day notice window. It was raised from $10,000 by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and is not inflation-indexed. It applies to a dormant LLC with zero income and zero tax due.

That asymmetry — not the labour in the forms — is the honest argument for paying for care. A $25,000 exposure is 55 times the mid-market fee.

(One footnote for anyone reading IRS material: parts of the Internal Revenue Manual at IRM 20.1.9 still carry legacy $10,000 language alongside a note recording the increase. The statute and the Form 5472 instructions both say $25,000. Cite those.)

Where we sit, plainly

We charge $349 for Form 5472 with the pro-forma 1120, prepared and signed, filed on your behalf. That is below the $399–450 cluster where productized services sit, and it includes a signature that most of the sub-$200 tier does not.

We can do that because this is what we do all day for one population — foreign owners of US LLCs — not an occasional foreign form dropped into a domestic practice. The preparers quoting $2,000 are not gouging; they are pricing an unfamiliar, high-liability job correctly for them.

When you should not pay us:

• Your LLC has never been funded and has literally no reportable transaction for the year. Check whether you owe a filing at all first.
• You are comfortable with the forms, your facts are simple, and you understand what you are signing. A $50 tool is a legitimate choice, and we would rather you make it knowingly.
• You need real tax planning, not a compliance filing. That is a different engagement and should be priced as one.

When it is worth paying more than us: if your facts are genuinely complex — multiple related parties, a treaty position, several delinquent years, an open examination — a firm charging $1,500 and asking hard questions may be exactly right.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I just file it myself? A: Yes. The forms are publicly available and many people do. The two places self-filers most often go wrong are identifying reportable transactions (formation amounts, contributions and distributions all count) and missing that it must be mailed or faxed, not e-filed.

Q: Is $349 too cheap to be real? A: It is the right price for a narrow, repeated job. Judge it the way you would judge any quote — ask who signs, what happens on a notice, and what late years cost.

Q: My formation agent offered to do it for $250. Good deal? A: Possibly. Ask whether they sign as preparer and what they do if the IRS writes. One buyer reported her registered agent later told her she might not be compliant and then stopped answering emails.

Q: I have three years unfiled. What should that cost? A: More per year than a current year, because each needs a reasonable cause statement and the narrative has to be consistent across all of them. Published rate cards for delinquent years run $1,500–$2,000 per year; we quote catch-up work as a fixed price for the whole set.

Q: Does the price change if my LLC had no activity? A: Somewhat — a dormant entity is faster. But it does not go to zero, because the filing is still due and someone still has to determine that it was genuinely dormant.

Next Steps

If you want the market answer: $399–450 is the middle, below $150 is a form-filling tool, and above $900 for a simple dormant LLC is above market unless it buys named-preparer signature, notice handling, or delinquent-year cleanup.

If you want ours, our pricing is published in full — every service, one number, no quote-to-find-out. For what the filing actually involves, see Form 5472 instructions; if you are late, multiple years of unfiled 5472s and reasonable cause cover the harder path.

This article is general information, not tax advice. Prices quoted from third parties were observed on 30 August 2026 and change without notice; verify before relying on any of them.