ITIN for German Citizens
Start with the part most people get wrong. The published application is not a nationality test. First Class Citizen lists three things you provide: a passport photo or scan, a non-US address, and an email. Their own word beside the address is any.
So a German passport and an address in Hamburg present exactly what a Portuguese passport and an address in Lisbon present. The filing does not turn on which country the address is in, and their page states plainly that there is no need to step into the USA or to be resident.
Germany starts to matter one step later. Not in the application, but in what you do with the number: the bank accounts, the credit file, and one detail about European credit cards that shows up twice in their own published client results. That is what the rest of this page is about.
What Germany changes, and what it does not
Their published requirement list runs to three lines and no more. A passport photo or scan. A non-US address, any. An email. Nothing on it asks for a nationality, a residence permit, a local tax number or a German document of any kind.
Read that carefully, because it cuts both ways. A German citizen living in Dubai and a Brazilian living in Berlin hand over the same three items, since their own list treats every non-US address as equivalent and says so in one word.
There is one condition upstream of all of it, and it is theirs, published on the same page: you must not be eligible for a Social Security number, meaning not a US resident, citizen or green card holder. Whether you clear that bar depends on your own status and your own history. A page cannot tell you, and this one will not try. That is a five minute conversation, and it belongs before anything is paid.
On travel, their wording is unambiguous. They state they use automated workflows that submit the application, and that there is no need to step into the USA or to be resident. Nothing in their published process asks you to appear anywhere in person.
The filing does not care where you sit. The step after it might, and that is a five minute conversation.
Book Your Assessment CallWhat it actually asks of you, from a desk in Germany
Their published process is four steps long and deliberately short. Fill a form in two minutes and pay. Sign a document within a week. They take care of the rest. In 45 to 60 days you receive the ITIN by email, valid for three years.
Step two is the only one with a deadline attached to you, and it is the only client-side deadline published anywhere in their material. Worth knowing in advance, because it is the one thing that has to happen on your schedule: one document, one signature, one week. Everything else in that list happens without you.
A client named Pedro A. describes the shape of it from the buyer’s side better than any process diagram. He sent a passport scan, an email and a mailing address. The team submitted everything within minutes of his application. Days later a document came from the IRS and he signed it. Then he waited.
That is the whole interaction. It is worth naming plainly, because the anxiety most people bring to this is about the parts they imagine: notarised translations, an apostille, an appointment in Frankfurt, the passport itself in an envelope crossing the Atlantic. None of those appear anywhere in what they publish, and on the last one their list is specific: a passport photo or scan, not the passport. Anything unusual about your own documents belongs on the call rather than in an assumption either way.
45 to 60 days, and the spread their own page shows
The number appears in four separate places on their service page: the hero, the process steps, the summary of what you get, and their own positioning line. Their fourth step reads, in 45 to 60 days (Express), you receive your ITIN via email, valid three years. No second, slower tier is published beside it.
Their published client results are wider than the quote at both ends, and that is the useful part rather than a footnote. Antonio Leao is published as their record at 37 days. Michael Niziolek reports 40 to 50 days. Davide Vignoli reports one month and two weeks. Thor M. reports within six weeks. And on the same page, Pedro A. writes that his took three months and two days.
One thing is not published at all: what exactly starts the clock. Payment, the signature in week one, or the submission itself. That matters more than it sounds, because the difference decides whether you are counting from the day you paid or from a day you never see.
The sentence to hold any provider to sits in their own fulfilment policy: the estimated time for completion will be communicated to the client before the purchase of the service. Ask for that estimate in writing, then compare it to the day it lands.
Delivery of the number itself is by email, which is identical from Hamburg, Houston or anywhere else.
Where the Atlantic actually costs you something
Here is the honest split, and it is the reason this page exists. The no-travel statement covers the ITIN application. It does not cover what comes after it.
Their own published ladder is explicit about step two: fly to the US and open bank accounts, naming Bank of America, Chase, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, take your first credit cards there, and start building the credit history. For someone in Munich that is a transatlantic flight, not a form.
And on the same page, in a client’s own words, Andrew Menechian writes that the LLC was fine, the EIN was fine, the ITIN was all good, and he got the bank accounts remotely.
Both of those are published by them, side by side, and they point in opposite directions. Nothing on the page reconciles them. That is not a reason to distrust either one, it is a reason to ask before you buy: which banks open remotely for a new ITIN holder today, and which need you in the branch. From Germany the answer is the difference between an afternoon and a week in Florida, and it is the single most expensive open question in this lane.
One smaller detail with the same shape. Their list of what you get includes your ITIN number and the original IRS letter, while their fulfilment policy states that they do not provide physical goods. How a physical letter from the IRS reaches an address in Germany, and who posts it, is not published anywhere. Ask, because you will want that letter.
Whether the card already in your wallet carries a route to a US Amex is worth one question.
Book Your Assessment CallWhat their published German results actually show
Their pages carry three German data points, and they are worth reading exactly as published rather than as a pattern.
The first is a client published under the name Thor M. on two of their pages. On the ITIN page he writes that he got his ITIN within six weeks, that it was the stepping stone, the first thing he needed to do, and that he filled out a form and waited. On their credit card mentorship page, under the same name: he had an AMEX Platinum in Germany, made the whole global transfer to the US, and has his first American Express there now, with a credit score of 730 on two cards.
The second is a message on their Hall of Wins. A client reports approval for the American Express Platinum Card in Germany within two days, using a US address and Global Card Transfer.
That is the most Germany-specific detail published anywhere in this lane, and it deserves its caveat in the same breath. American Express decides which cards carry that feature, not First Class Citizen, and one client reporting on his own approval is an account, not a rule. Whether the card already in your wallet carries it is a question with a real answer, and the call is where you get it.
The third sits on their LLC page and is about the problem rather than the result. Hussein Siblani writes that he had clients everywhere but could not invoice them, because all he had were his bank accounts in Germany, so he was basically working for free for months. That is the shape of it for a lot of people reading this page.
For scale, their published totals are more than 1,000 structures built across more than 30 countries. No country breakdown is published, so nobody, including this page, can tell you how many of those were German.
The published price, and what sits inside it
Now the number. First Class Citizen publishes 1,000 US dollars for the ITIN service, valid for three years, with the same renewal price, and 0 dollars in maintenance cost in between. That is the entire pricing block, read on their service page in July 2026. Prices move, so confirm it before you pay rather than after.
Their own framing of it, on the same page: simple, transparent pricing so you know what you are paying for, no more expensive calls with lawyers, no hidden costs or surprise fees, and everything you need for less than the cost of one hour with a top-tier law firm.
What their page lists as included: IRS contacts to expedite it, your ITIN number and the original IRS letter, and once the number arrives, access to their bonus, a strategy for opening US bank accounts.
Two things a buyer in Europe should read before paying. The figure is published in US dollars, and nothing on their pages states whether anything else is billed alongside it, so that is a question for the call rather than an assumption. And the refund position does not sit beside the price at all, it sits on their fulfilment policy page. In their words: refund requests can be initiated within one business day of payment if a mistake has been made by the customer, assessed case by case, and if a cancellation request is made after service processing has commenced, refunds will not be granted.
One boundary worth drawing while the number is on the table. The far end of their published ladder, the funding and the top-tier card work, is gated on their own page behind six months of credit building and offered as a separate service. It is not inside this fee, and no page should let you think otherwise.
What this page will not tell you
On tax there is exactly one line to report, and it is theirs, not ours. Their published FAQ states: having an ITIN will not create a US filing liability and / or tax liability. That is their published statement, about the American side.
Nothing they publish addresses what an ITIN means where you actually live, and this page will not invent it. What applies to you depends on your own residency, your own history and your own obligations at home, and none of those can be resolved by a web page in either direction. Bring it to the call, and bring it before you pay.
Four more things are simply not published anywhere, and naming them is more useful than filling them in. There is no published path for what happens if the IRS rejects an application. There is no published approval rate. It is not published which languages the call itself is held in, and their material is in English, so if that matters, ask when you book. And while the number is published as valid for three years at the same renewal price, what triggers a renewal and when to start one is not stated.
Ask all of them before you pay anyone, this service included. A provider who answers them cleanly on a call has told you more about what your money buys than any page can.
The filing does not care where you sit. The step after it might, and that is a five minute conversation.
Book Your Assessment CallWhat the number turned into
Real client wins, straight from the Hall of Wins.
The rest of the picture
- Find your routeTell it what you are trying to do and it maps the guides to read in order.
- ITIN document checklistPick your situation, get the exact list the IRS accepts.
- What it costsPublished prices and timelines, service by service.
- US credit calculatorWhat your spend returns at the rates issuers publish today.
FAQ
Do I need to travel to the US to get an ITIN from Germany?
What do I have to provide from Germany?
Does German citizenship change the application?
How long does it take from Germany?
Will an ITIN change what I pay in tax?
What does it cost, and in what currency?
Can I open the US bank accounts without flying over?
I already hold an American Express in Germany. Does that matter?
Get your own case looked at before you pay anyone
The assessment call covers the eligibility condition that depends on your own status, what the timeline looks like for your case, and the two things this page deliberately left open: how the banking step runs from Germany, and what happens if an application bounces. Free, qualified, and direct about what applies to you.
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Founder & CEO, The First Class Citizen