Reference numbers 101 and 102

Verified on November 5, 2026 against the IRS page “Employer identification number” and the Instructions for Form SS-4 (Rev. December 2025), cited in full at the foot of this entry.

§ 1 —What a reference number is, on the IRS's own showing

A reference number is what the online EIN application displays when it cannot complete an application in that session. The IRS's published guidance treats the stop as a routing event, not a decision on the entity: the applicant is directed to complete Form SS-4 and use another route — fax or mail — or to contact the IRS for assistance with that application.^1,2 Nothing in the IRS's published material describes a reference number as a denial of the entity, a penalty, or a bar on applying by another route.

§ 2 —What this library does not claim

The IRS does not publish, on the pages cited here, a table decoding each reference number. Secondary sites circulate decodings — 101 is widely described by practitioners as a name-conflict stop, and 102 as a responsible-party name-and-number mismatch — but those descriptions are practitioner reports, not IRS publications, and this library prints them only as that: reported, not verified against a primary IRS source. Where the distinction matters, the entry hedges because the source hedges by silence.

§ 3 —The procedure that is published

Whatever the number, the published path is the same, and it is short:

Do not start a second entity to escape the stop, and do not re-run the online session repeatedly — the one-EIN-per-responsible-party-per-day limit (REF A-1) still applies. Complete Form SS-4 from the current instructions (annotated at REF B-3), checking line 1 against the formation document and lines 7a–7b against the responsible party's own records, since a name or number discrepancy is the class of problem a human reviewer can resolve and a session timer cannot. File by fax or mail to the destination the SS-4 instructions assign to your situation (REF B-2), keeping the transmission record or mailing receipt with the entity's papers.

§ 4 —For this library's typical reader

Most non-resident applicants never see a reference number, because the online route is closed to them before a session begins — a responsible party with no SSN or ITIN applies on paper from the start (REF B-1 § 3). A reference number is chiefly met by applicants who had a U.S.-numbered responsible party and a U.S. principal place of business, and whose application a person now needs to review. The paper route is not a punishment route; for this audience it is the normal one.

General information only, not tax advice. Where this page and an IRS source differ, the IRS source governs.