Getting an ITIN Without Sending Your Passport: Four Routes, Sorted by How Long the Document Leaves Your Hands

Two sentences circulate about this question, and read side by side they look like they cancel each other out. One says that most ITIN applicants have to submit their original passports rather than copies. The other says never to send the IRS your original passport. Both describe something real. They sound like a contradiction because each one is describing a different way of filing the same form.

Sorted by what happens to the document, there are four ways to file, and what counts as an acceptable document is the same on all of them. What changes is who inspects your passport, where the inspection happens, and how the document gets back to you afterwards. That turns the useful question into something more concrete than whether an ITIN "requires" your passport. The question is how many days the document is out of your hands, and the four routes answer it with numbers that run from most of a business quarter down to the length of one appointment.

One note for founders who arrived here from a company formation. Owning a U.S. LLC does not by itself create a need for this number; the need appears when a filing requires a number for you personally, which is a separate question from whether your company has an EIN. Who can apply and who is shut out is the subject of our ITIN guide, and which number belongs on which line is covered in SSN and your business. Everything below assumes you have already established that Form W-7 is in your future, and asks only what happens to your passport when you file it.

What the IRS accepts instead of your original passport

The Instructions for Form W-7 state the requirement and define the alternative in the same sentence: "You must submit original documents, or certified copies of these documents from the issuing agency, that support the information provided on Form W-7."

Most of the confusion on this subject lives inside the phrase "certified copy," because the IRS uses it in a narrower sense than ordinary English does. The instructions define it this way: "A certified copy of a document is one that the original issuing agency provides and certifies as an exact copy of the original document and contains an official stamped seal from the agency." The agency's supporting documents page says the same thing more briefly, adding that it "has the agency's official, stamped seal."

Read "issuing agency" literally, because that phrase rules out the professional most people would ask first. A notary did not issue your passport. The IRS puts the consequence in five words and then spells out exactly what it is rejecting: "We don't accept notarized documents. Notarized documents are signed in front of a civil official called a notary public." A copy that a notary has witnessed, stamped and signed is still not a certified copy for this purpose. There is one narrow exception, and it is written for a specific group: dependents and spouses of U.S. military personnel applying from an overseas or APO/FPO address may submit notarized copies, and a copy of the servicemember's U.S. military ID has to accompany them.

The passport sits at the center of this question for a structural reason. Of the thirteen documents the IRS accepts, only one proves both halves of what the application has to establish. As the agency puts it: "A passport is the only stand-alone document. If you submit an original valid passport or certified copy, you don't need to submit any other supporting documents." Drop the passport and the paperwork multiplies rather than disappearing, because "If a passport is not submitted, a combination of at least two other documents, with at least one containing a photograph, must be submitted with the ITIN application." Whatever you send has to be current, which the IRS defines as not expired on the date you submit the package.

Four routes, sorted by how long the passport is out of your hands

Two of those rows have a trapdoor underneath them, and both traps work the same way: a route that looks like the third or fourth row quietly behaves like the first. One is the difference between the two kinds of acceptance agent. The other is the difference between one Taxpayer Assistance Center and another. Each gets its own section below, because each one turns "my passport stays with me" into "my passport is in Texas" without anybody saying so out loud.

Mailing the original, and the sixty-day clock attached to it

Start with the line that decides where your passport comes back to. The instructions for line 2 of Form W-7 are specific about its job: "Enter your complete mailing address on line 2. This is the address the IRS will use to return your original documents and send written notification of your ITIN application status."

Everything about the return is governed by that entry. The IRS says that "Original documents you submit will be returned to you at the mailing address shown on your Form W-7," and that you don't need to supply a return envelope. It then offers something worth taking up, in a sentence that names your document by category: "Applicants are permitted to include a prepaid Express Mail or courier envelope for faster return delivery of their documents and to ensure the secure delivery of valuable documents, such as passports." Supplying that envelope is the one lever this route gives you over the return trip.

The wait has a published length. The supporting documents page says it "can take up to 60 days to get them back," and the instructions set the same number as the point where you stop waiting and start asking: "If your original documents aren't returned within 60 days, you can call the IRS." Sixty days is long enough to cover a visa appointment, a border crossing, a bank onboarding that asks for photo identification, or a flight home.

Which is presumably why the IRS wrote the way out into its own instructions, one sentence later: "If you will need your documents for any purpose within 60 days of submitting your ITIN application, you may wish to apply in person at an IRS Taxpayer Assistance Center or a CAA." The conclusion of this article is already sitting inside the form's own instruction booklet. It is not where most people look.

Keep the sixty days separate from the other number attached to this process, because they count different things and finish at different times. The sixty days measures the return of your documents. Written notice of your application status runs on its own schedule, which the instructions put at seven weeks, or "9 to 11 weeks if you submit the application during peak processing periods (January 15 through April 30) or if you're filing from overseas." Our ITIN guide works through that calendar and what it means for a filing deadline. For the purposes of this page, only the first number matters, because only the first one is about your passport.

One restriction on line 2 catches people who were planning to route the return somewhere other than home. The instructions say: "If the U.S. Postal Service won't deliver mail to your physical location, enter the U.S. Postal Service's post office box number for your mailing address. Contact your local U.S. Post Office for more information. Don't use a post office box owned and operated by a private firm or company." Whether the address you have in mind falls inside that restriction is not always obvious from the way it is written. We sell mail service, and we will still say the unprofitable thing here: a passport in transit is the wrong document to use for testing an address arrangement you have never used before. The distinction between the box types is the subject of Is your mailing address a P.O. Box?. A second sentence in the same instructions narrows line 2 again, and this one is conditional: "Don't use a post office box or an 'in care of' (c/o) address instead of a street address on line 2 if you're entering just a 'country' name on line 3. If you do, your application may be rejected." Read that as a pairing rather than a flat ban. It binds what you put on line 2 to how much you put on line 3.

There is a second limit on that line, and it surprises people who assume the IRS keeps one address for each person. The instructions say the agency "won't use the address you enter to update its records for other purposes unless you include a U.S. federal tax return with your Form W-7," and they point anyone whose home address has changed to Form 8822 as a separate filing. The IRS does not carry the change across its own filings for you, which is the same separation we traced on the company side in how to change your LLC address with the IRS.

Getting a certified copy from the agency that issued the passport

This is the route that takes the IRS out of the passport question entirely. What travels to Austin is a copy bearing an official seal, so there is nothing of yours to return, and the sixty-day clock never starts.

The cost is that you have to find an office willing to produce that copy, and the IRS is candid that the answer varies by country: "You may be able to request a certified copy of documents at an embassy or consulate. However, services may vary between countries, so it's recommended that you contact the appropriate consulate or embassy for specific information." Its supporting documents page adds a parallel channel with an instruction attached: "Officers at U.S. embassies and consulates overseas provide certification and authentication services. Contact the Consular Section, American Citizens Services of the U.S. Embassy or Consulate in advance for hours of operation for these services."

Both sentences are invitations to make a phone call rather than guarantees, and the underlying test never moves: the certification has to come from the agency that issued the document. For a passport that means your own country's passport authority, whether you reach it at home or through one of its missions abroad. Ask before you travel to an office, because the service you need may not be one that office performs.

One formatting requirement applies specifically to this route and gets left out of most descriptions of it. The IRS says a certified copy of a passport "must include all U.S. visa pages if a visa is required for your Form W-7 application." A certified copy of the biographical page alone can therefore be rejected for incompleteness even though the seal on it is genuine, which is an expensive way to discover a detail that costs nothing to get right the first time.

No processing figure is published for this route, and that is not an omission. The waiting belongs to the issuing authority rather than to the IRS, so the trade you are making is a known sixty days for an unknown period you can measure in advance by asking. In many countries the answer is days.

What a certifying acceptance agent authenticates, and what still travels to Austin

The IRS authorizes two kinds of agent to help with this form, and the difference between them is the single most expensive thing to miss on this subject. Its comparison of the two puts them in adjacent columns. A certifying acceptance agent "Authenticates supporting documents, except foreign military ID cards and any documents for dependents that aren't passports and birth certificates," and "Returns authenticated documents immediately." An acceptance agent "Reviews and mails supporting documents."

Reading those two lines against each other is the whole lesson. Both kinds of agent help you complete Form W-7, both mail the application package to the IRS, and both can work with the agency to resolve problems. Only one of them hands your passport back. The instructions are blunt about the other: "An AA will need to submit original documentation or certified copies of the documentation from the issuing agency to the IRS for all applicants."

Now look at how that distinction reaches you in practice. On the IRS directory of approved agents, the entire difference arrives as a footnote: "*Acceptance agents are marked on the list with an asterisk." Someone searching for an "acceptance agent near me," finding one on an official government list and booking an appointment can do everything right and still end up on the mail route, because the thing that separated the two options was a single typographic mark.

Assume you have found a CAA. The immediate return is real, and so are its boundaries. The instructions describe the authority and then narrow it twice: "A CAA can verify original documentation and certified copies of the documentation from the issuing agency for primary and secondary applicants and their dependents, except for foreign military identification cards. For dependents, CAAs can only verify passports and birth certificates. The CAA will return the documentation immediately after reviewing its authenticity." The IRS program page states the same limit from the other side, saying that for dependents CAAs "must send the original or certified copies of all other documents directly to the IRS." So a family filing together can have the parents' passports handed back at the appointment while a child's other documents go into the envelope regardless.

Then there is the sentence that decides whether a remote engagement actually keeps the passport with you. The IRS says: "AAs and CAAs must conduct an in-person interview with each ITIN applicant (primary, secondary, and dependent) in order to complete the application. Video conferencing maybe used for the interview only. However, CAAs must have the original identification documents or certified copies from the issuing agency in their possession during the interview." Video covers the conversation. It does not cover the document, which has to be in the agent's hands while the conversation happens. An agent who signs you up remotely still needs your passport, or a certified copy of it, to physically arrive, and the return trip is then a courier's responsibility rather than the agency's. The immediate-return promise covers what happens after the review. It says nothing about how the document reached the agent in the first place.

What replaces your passport inside the envelope is a form the agent signs. The IRS requires that CAAs "complete and attach a Form W-7 (COA), Certificate of Accuracy for IRS Individual Identification Taxpayer Number, to each Form W-7 application submitted," and describes it as "verification they have reviewed the original documentation or certified copies from the agency that issued them." The agent's attestation stands in for the document itself, which is the mechanism that makes the whole route possible.

On price, the IRS's acceptance agent page says one thing and no more: "Fees for service may vary." This is a paid professional service with no published rate, set by each firm, so treat the fee as a question to settle before booking rather than something with a standard answer.

One recent change lands directly on founders. For applicants claiming the partnership exception, the IRS says that effective June 1, 2026, a CAA has to include the portion of the partnership or LLC agreement showing the partnership's name, EIN, and the applicant's name and signature, and that the number "may be written on the partnership agreement or printed on an included CP 575 series EIN confirmation notice or Letter 147C." If your company's original EIN notice never reached you, replacing it is its own procedure with its own waiting period, which we traced in how to get an EIN verification letter. The IRS also notes that updates to the Form W-7 instructions covering this requirement are "currently in progress," so read the current instructions rather than a saved copy.

In person at an IRS Taxpayer Assistance Center, if the one near you does this

The fourth route is the one the IRS names in its own escape-hatch sentence, and on paper it is the cleanest. The instructions describe it like this: "You can apply for your ITIN by visiting designated IRS Taxpayer Assistance Centers (TACs). They can verify original documentation and certified copies of the documentation from the issuing agency for primary and secondary applicants and their dependents. For dependents, TACs can verify passports, national identification cards, and birth certificates. These documents will be returned to you immediately. Service at TACs is by appointment only."

Compare that dependent list against the CAA one. A TAC can verify a dependent's national identification card; a CAA cannot. For a family whose children do not hold passports, the counter and the agent give genuinely different answers about which documents end up in an envelope.

The word "designated" in the first sentence is doing more work than it appears to. Not every Taxpayer Assistance Center performs this service, and the instructions state what the others do instead: "TACs that don't offer ITIN document authentication service will mail the original documents, Form W-7, and the tax return to the IRS Austin Service Center for processing." Walking into the wrong location converts route four into route one. You will have traveled, taken an appointment slot and handed over your passport in person, and the passport will then get on a plane anyway.

Avoiding that costs one lookup. The IRS publishes the list of participating locations at IRS.gov/W7DocumentVerification, and appointments are scheduled by calling 844-545-5640. Book only after the center you plan to visit appears on that list. Note also that the agency hedges its description of what comes back, saying you can get "most supporting documents authenticated and returned at the end of your appointment," so a package with unusual documents in it may not clear entirely at the counter.

If you are applying from outside the United States

Geography closes one of these routes and leaves the other three open. The IRS describes the in-person option as scheduling an appointment at a Taxpayer Assistance Center "while in the United States," and describes the agent option as available "either in the United States or abroad." The instructions repeat the point for both agent types: "AAs and CAAs are available both domestically and abroad." If you are not in the country and do not plan to be, the counter is not on your menu, and the certified copy is usually the route that keeps the document closest to home.

If you do end up mailing originals, three details are worth setting up in advance. Include the prepaid courier envelope the instructions permit, since it is the only part of the return trip you control. Expect the longer notice window, because filing from overseas puts you in the nine to eleven week band on its own. And treat the address on line 2 as a decision rather than a default, since both your passport and the notice carrying your new number will be posted to it.

That notice has a name worth knowing before it goes missing. The IRS issues the number on a CP565, which it calls the ITIN assignment notice, and its standing advice for a lost one is to contact the agency. It gives the same instruction for a package that has gone quiet: contact them if no notice arrives inside the published window, and contact them if mailed original documents have not come back after sixty days. There is a matching line for anyone whose address changes mid-application, which says to contact the IRS if you move before the number arrives. All three instructions point at the same weak spot, which is a single address holding a passport, a notice and a number for a stretch of weeks.

If a payment deadline arrives while you are still waiting, the IRS publishes a workaround that keeps you from having to invent a number. On an estimated tax voucher, its instruction is to write "ITIN TO BE REQUESTED" in the section asking for an SSN or ITIN, and to keep Form W-7 out of that envelope.

One boundary belongs on this page, because we sell mail service and this is where a pitch would normally go. The restriction quoted above sits on the exact line where a passport return address goes, and we do not hold ourselves out as a place to route original passports or other valuables. The address problem our product does solve is the company one: the mailing address your business puts on federal filings, which the IRS then prints on correspondence until you change it. If that is the question you actually came in with, you can get your address in about a minute, and we email you the next steps.

FAQ

Do I have to send my passport to the IRS for an ITIN?

Not on every route, and the answer depends on how you file rather than on who you are. Mailing Form W-7 with your original passport is one of four options. The others are sending a certified copy obtained from the agency that issued the document, filing through a certifying acceptance agent who authenticates the passport and returns it immediately, and applying in person at a Taxpayer Assistance Center that offers ITIN document authentication. Two of those have conditions attached. An acceptance agent without certifying authority "Reviews and mails supporting documents," and a location that does not offer document authentication "will mail the original documents, Form W-7, and the tax return to the IRS Austin Service Center for processing," so on either of those paths the passport travels after all.

What is the difference between an acceptance agent and a certifying acceptance agent?

Both help you complete Form W-7, mail the application package to the IRS, and work with the agency on problems with the application. The certifying agent holds authority the other one does not: it "Authenticates supporting documents, except foreign military ID cards and any documents for dependents that aren't passports and birth certificates," and it "Returns authenticated documents immediately." It also receives copies of client ITIN notices. The agent without that authority has to send your originals or issuing-agency certified copies to the IRS for all applicants. On the IRS directory the two are separated by a footnote rather than by a heading: "*Acceptance agents are marked on the list with an asterisk." Check the mark before you book.

Will a notarized copy of my passport work?

No, outside one military exception. The IRS states it directly: "We don't accept notarized documents." The acceptable alternative to an original is a certified copy, which the agency defines as an exact copy that the original issuing agency provides and certifies, carrying that agency's official stamped seal. A notary confirms a signer's identity and witnesses a signing, which is a different act from an issuing authority attesting that a copy of its own document is genuine. The exception covers dependents and spouses of U.S. military personnel applying from an overseas or APO/FPO address, who may submit notarized copies along with a copy of the servicemember's U.S. military ID.

How do I get a certified copy of my passport for an ITIN application?

Request it from the authority that issued the passport. The IRS says you "may be able to request a certified copy of documents at an embassy or consulate," and immediately warns that "services may vary between countries," so it recommends contacting the appropriate consulate or embassy for specific information. Its supporting documents page adds that officers at U.S. embassies and consulates overseas provide certification and authentication services, and tells applicants to contact the Consular Section in advance for hours of operation. One requirement applies to the copy itself: a certified copy of a passport "must include all U.S. visa pages if a visa is required for your Form W-7 application."

Where does the ITIN notice go, and what if my documents never come back?

Both travel to the address you wrote on line 2 of Form W-7, which the instructions describe as the address the IRS uses to return your original documents and to send written notification of your application status. The number itself arrives on a CP565, the ITIN assignment notice, and the agency's advice if you cannot find that notice later is to contact it. For documents, the published trigger is sixty days: if you mailed original supporting documents and have not received them within that period, contact the IRS. A separate instruction covers a change of address mid-application, telling you to contact the agency if you move before the number reaches you.

Bottom line

The document rule is identical on all four routes: original documents, or certified copies from the agency that issued them, with nothing from a notary. What differs between the routes is custody, and custody is measured in days.

Mailing the original opens a return window the IRS puts at up to sixty days. A certified copy from the issuing agency moves the waiting to an office you can telephone in advance. A certifying acceptance agent returns the document immediately after the interview but has to be holding it during the interview, so booking by video removes the travel without removing the shipping. An appointment at a Taxpayer Assistance Center hands the passport back across the counter, provided that particular location is on the published list, because the ones that are not will put your originals in the mail to Austin regardless of how far you drove.

So pick the route by the next date you need the passport in your own hands. If that date is inside sixty days, the IRS has already written the answer into its own instructions, and the answer is not the post.

This is general information about IRS application procedures rather than tax or legal advice. IRS forms and instructions are revised over time, and program requirements change with them, so confirm the current Instructions for Form W-7 and the current list of participating Taxpayer Assistance Centers on irs.gov, or check with a qualified professional about your own situation.