What characters does the IRS EIN application allow in a business name?
EINFormationIRS
Drop it or spell it out, and keep the state-registered name everywhere else. The IRS says its systems accept only letters, numbers, hyphens and ampersands in a business name, and its guidance for the online application says what to do with the rest: spell out a period, plus sign or at symbol, or drop it and leave a space, so Jones.Com becomes Jones Dot Com or Jones Com; replace a forward or backward slash with a hyphen; and drop an apostrophe without leaving a space, so O'Brien becomes OBrien. Accented letters are not on the list either, so an é is entered as a plain e. An ampersand can stay as it is or be written as the word and.
None of this changes the company's legal name. That is whatever the state approved on the formation filing, and the IRS entry is a spelling of it that fits a system built decades ago. Keep the state's spelling on your contracts, your bank forms and your website. The same character rules apply to the paper Form SS-4, so faxing the application does not get the apostrophe back.
What the bank will see
The CP 575 confirmation letter shows the name as the IRS recorded it, adjusted spelling included. Banks are used to it and take the letter alongside the formation certificate, since the two together identify the same company. If a bank's own system balks at the difference, a one-line explanation that the IRS does not accept the character is usually all it takes.
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Written by the lawyers who built Arabella. This is legal information, not legal advice for your situation, and reading it does not make us your lawyers. For a real dispute or a high-stakes decision, talk to a licensed attorney. More questions.