Getting EIN and tax IDs for your converted Hawaii LLC

The EIN question, answered in one test

One test decides the federal number: does the LLC have members besides you, employees, or excise tax obligations?

A single-member LLC with none of the three keeps the old number. The IRS states it as a bullet: you do not need a new EIN if you use your sole-proprietor EIN for your single-member LLC, do not choose corporate tax treatment, and have no employees and no excise tax to pay.

Every other case crosses the line. The IRS puts a new EIN on the single-member LLC that has to file employment or excise taxes, and adding a member makes the LLC a partnership for federal purposes, which is a new taxpayer of its own.

Most converting owners land on the simpler side and keep one number. The moment you hire, the answer flips, because employment taxes go under the company's name and EIN from the first payroll.

The IRS states you do not need a new EIN if you use your sole-proprietor EIN for your single-member LLC, with no corporate election, no employees, and no excise tax. — Internal Revenue Service, retrieved 2026-09-29

The IRS states you need a new EIN if you own a single-member LLC and have to file employment or excise taxes. — Internal Revenue Service, retrieved 2026-09-29

Employment taxes run under the company's number

The boundary the IRS draws is not about ownership. It is about which taxes the number reports.

A single-member LLC that is disregarded for income tax still reports and pays employment taxes under the company's own name and EIN, for wages paid after the date the rule applies. The income tax side stays on your return; the payroll side belongs to the LLC.

That is the reason hiring flips the EIN answer, and it is also the reason the EIN decision should come before the first employee's first day rather than after. The payroll registrations, the quarter's filings, and the W-2s at year end all follow the number.

If your proprietorship already had employees, you already know the shape of this: the unemployment account and the withholding account move to the LLC's number the same way, and the contracts and insurance guide covers the insurance that travels with them.

The IRS states that a single-member LLC disregarded for income tax is still required to use its own name and EIN for reporting and payment of employment taxes. — Internal Revenue Service, retrieved 2026-09-29

A new EIN is free, and the IRS says so twice

If you do need a new number, nothing about the application costs money. The IRS issues the EIN free, online, and issues it immediately when the application is approved.

The IRS also warns against the sites that charge for one. You never have to pay a fee for an EIN, and any page selling the number for $50 or so is selling a free application with typing included.

The online application is one sitting and it expires after fifteen minutes of inactivity, so have the details in hand first: the LLC's name as it appears on the Articles of Organization, the formation date, and the member count.

Keep the CP 575 notice the IRS issues with the number. It is the document the bank asks for when the LLC opens its account, and the same letter is what a formation service's EIN add-on buys you: the same free application, done by someone else.

$0The IRS states that you never have to pay a fee for an EIN, that it warns against websites that charge for one, and that an approved online application issues the EIN immediately. — Internal Revenue Service, retrieved 2026-09-29

The Hawaii side does not care about the federal answer

Hawaii's Department of Taxation reaches the opposite conclusion for its own taxes, and the state's own instructions say so in one passage worth reading twice.

A single-member LLC disregarded for federal income tax is still treated as a separate entity for state purposes, and must obtain its own license and file its own returns for general excise and the other state taxes. The general excise tax license is registered on Form BB-1, the Basic Business Application, with a one-time $20 fee.

So the GET license always moves. Your proprietorship's license was registered against your name and your taxpayer identity; the LLC's license goes on the LLC's own Hawaii Tax ID. There is no transfer form between them. The old one closes and the new one opens.

That is the piece to sequence carefully with a trade license, because a license board that checks tax clearance wants the DOTAX name to match the license name. The licenses guide covers that dependency.

Hawaii's Form BB-1 instructions state that a single-member LLC disregarded for federal income tax is still a separate entity that must obtain its own license and file its own state tax returns. — Hawaii Department of Taxation, retrieved 2026-09-29

$20Hawaii registers the general excise tax license on Form BB-1, the Basic Business Application, with a one-time $20 license fee. — Hawaii Department of Taxation, retrieved 2026-09-29

W-9s and the name behind the number

Payers do not read tax law. They read the W-9, and the W-9 has one rule that a converting owner has to know.

A single-member LLC disregarded for income tax gives the owner's name and taxpayer ID on the W-9, not the LLC's name and its own EIN. The checks still come in the LLC's name where the contracts say so; the number the payer reports against is the owner's.

A multi-member LLC is the reverse: it is its own taxpayer, and its W-9 carries the partnership's name and EIN. The switch between those two rows on the form is the visible edge of the whole single-versus-multi-member difference.

Get the W-9 out ahead of the first payment under the company's contracts, not after it. A payer who filed last year's form reports last year's name, and correcting a 1099 after the fact is slower than sending the right form in the first place.

The IRS states that a W-9 from a disregarded single-member LLC should provide the owner's SSN or EIN, not the LLC's EIN. — Internal Revenue Service, retrieved 2026-09-29

The bank account and the letters behind it

Open the LLC's account with the file you have just assembled: the Articles of Organization as accepted by the state, the EIN letter if the company has one, and the operating agreement.

The account is not a formality. It is the instrument that makes the separation the LLC exists for, because business money that never touches your personal account is the cleanest evidence of a real company. The conversion guide covers why that separation is what a court looks at first.

Expect the bank's compliance questions on a brand-new entity, and expect to guarantee the account personally for a while. That is the same pattern as the insurance and the leases: the state filings make the company real, and the counterparties spend a year checking it is.

Then route every payment to the account, and close the proprietorship's tax registrations on Form GEW-TA-RV-1 once no money moves under the old name.

Form GEW-TA-RV-1Hawaii's Form BB-1 instructions direct filers who wish to cancel a tax license or permit to complete and submit Form GEW-TA-RV-1. — Hawaii Department of Taxation, retrieved 2026-09-29

Where the numbers land at filing time

The numbers settle at filing time into one of two shapes, and both are on one page.

Single-member, no employees: "your return keeps Schedule C, the LLC's activity reported on it, and the Hawaii GET returns filed under the LLC's own tax ID. Multi-member or payroll: a partnership return or employment tax filings under the company's EIN, alongside the state registrations."

The page that follows the money through both shapes, including the GET's filing calendar and what does not change, is taxes after the conversion.

The date to hold is the changeover date: one day of mixed banking and mixed receipts makes a year-end reconciliation out of what should have been two clean periods. The checklist puts the account and the registrations on the same page.

The IRS states that a single-member LLC not electing corporate treatment is a disregarded entity whose activities are reflected on its owner's federal return, generally on Schedule C. — Internal Revenue Service, retrieved 2026-09-29

Questions