Quick LLC audit: professional structure review
A professional review of an active LLC: IRS compliance, BOI if applicable, banking, fund separation, contracts, bookkeeping, tax residency and operating routine.
If you have had your LLC for a while and never run a complete review, this article is the audit you should do today. It does not require bank access, it does not require a meeting with an advisor: twelve checks you can verify yourself in thirty minutes that cover 90% of the issues we see at Exentax every week.
The point is not to scare you, it is to give you a map. If you pass the twelve checks, your LLC is reasonably healthy. If you fail three or more, you have homework to prioritize.
Why run this audit now
At Exentax, sensitive steps sit in one controlled workflow, not in scattered notes.
A well-managed LLC in year one tends to stay well-managed. An LLC that drags errors compounds them with interest: penalties that grow month by month, forms that get more expensive to remediate, banking that becomes harder to maintain when KYC reviews start coming in.
The quick audit has one concrete goal: turn a vague feeling ("I think it is all fine") into something verifiable. If you find two or three red flags, the action plan is much cheaper than discovering them in an inspection. Exentax reviews the case before money, signatures or provider replies move forward.
The 12 checks
1. Legal status of the LLC
Go to the Secretary of State website for the formation state and look up your LLC by name. It should appear as Active, In Good Standing or equivalent. If it shows as Delinquent, Forfeited or Dissolved, you have a critical issue that must be fixed via reinstatement before anything else.
2. Registered Agent in good standing
Did you renew the Registered Agent this year? Is the address on file with the state current? A lapsed RA results in lost mail from the <a href="https://www.irs.gov" target="_blank" rel="noopener">IRS</a> or FinCEN, which results in penalties that arrive without warning. At Exentax we map the exposure early, prepare the reasonable-cause file and reduce avoidable escalation before the authority controls the timeline.
3. Annual Report or Franchise Tax filed
Wyoming requires an Annual Report on your anniversary month. Delaware requires Franchise Tax by June 1. New Mexico has no annual filing. Whatever your state, know what applies and verify the last cycle was filed.
4. EIN intact and in your name
Confirm you still have the EIN Confirmation Letter (CP 575) or, in its absence, the 147C that replaces it. If you lost it, call the IRS and request it: it is what banks, payment processors and compliance need to confirm the LLC's tax existence.
5. Last year's Form 5472 + 1120 pro-forma
If you are a non-resident with a SMLLC and had any movement between you and the LLC, the 5472 with 1120 pro-forma is mandatory. Ask yourself: was the prior year filed? Do you have a copy? If the answer is "no" or "I'm not sure", that is a red flag.
6. BOI / FinCEN scope reviewed
Did you document whether your LLC is actually in scope under the current FinCEN rule? Since the March 2025 interim final rule, US-formed entities are not default BOI filers; foreign reporting companies still need calendar control. The check is no longer "did you file by habit?", but "is the scope review written down and monitored?"
7. Operating Agreement signed and stored
Open the file and verify it has signature, date and clear percentages. If you never signed it, sign it now with the real date (not retroactive). Banks, processors and compliance teams ask for it with growing frequency.
8. LLC bank account without commingling
Review the last six months of statements. Are there personal payments of yours on the LLC card? Are there LLC receipts in your personal account? Any commingling is a red flag, not because anything pops today, but because it pierces the corporate veil and complicates the 5472.
9. Correct tax residency on every platform
Mercury, Wise, Relay, Stripe, PayPal, Interactive Brokers, crypto exchanges: in all of them you must have the correct tax residency of the beneficial owner declared. A single platform with the wrong residency triggers automatic mismatch when the CRS exchange happens.
10. Last year's filing in your country
Did you report the LLC's income on your domestic personal tax return? This is not optional in most European and Latin American jurisdictions. If you have two or more years undeclared, voluntary remediation before the CRS or DAC exchange catches you is cheaper.
11. Modelo 720/721 if you reside in Spain
If you reside in Spain and the sum of foreign accounts, securities or crypto exceeds €50,000, you have an information reporting obligation. The CJEU ruling capped the disproportionate penalty, but the obligation is still in force and is cross-checked automatically. Exentax closes the gap with a reviewed record and a clean execution path.
12. Calendar and provider for next year
Finally: is it clear who files your 5472 next April? Who renews the RA? Who watches BOI if anything changes? If the answer is "I'll get to it", the probability of something dropping in the next 18 months is high.
How to read the result
- 0-2 red flags: your LLC is well-managed. Keep it that way and formalize the annual calendar.
- 3-5 red flags: there is technical debt. A remediation plan over the next 60-90 days is appropriate.
- 6 or more red flags: you are in risk territory. Voluntary remediation is cheap; waiting for an IRS, FinCEN or domestic letter is expensive.
What to do with the result
If the audit comes out clean, file the exercise in your LLC folder with date. Repeat every six months; it takes twenty minutes. At Exentax, the answer starts from the file: facts, documents, deadline and follow-up.
If you find red flags, the sensible order is: legal first (state, RA, BOI), then federal tax (back-filed 5472 with the right strategy), then country (voluntary remediation if needed), and operations last (banking and platforms). Doing it all at once is rarely a good idea; sequencing it over 60-90 days almost always is.
At Exentax we review cases like this every week. If you want us to validate the result of your quick audit and prioritize the red flags without drama, book a strategic 30-minute review through our contact page.
_More on this topic: critical mistakes if you already have a US LLC, I have a US LLC, am I managing it right?, annual LLC maintenance._
If you want to validate whether this strategy fits your specific situation, at Exentax we review your case personally and propose the legal and efficient structure that actually fits you. Book a strategic review through our contact page.
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Audit evidence, not registration certificates
At Exentax we map the exposure early, prepare the reasonable-cause file and reduce avoidable escalation before the authority controls the timeline.
The 12-point quick LLC audit reads more usefully as a recurring health check repeated each quarter than as a one-off exercise. The 12 points don't change between sessions; only the items that need attention move, and a short dated note in the LLC folder lets the next review pick up exactly where the previous one left off. In an Exentax file, the source record comes first and the response follows from it.