Intake questions
- 'Are you a U.S. citizen or green-card holder?' — phrase it as standard practice, because it is; the answer drives the whole file
- 'If foreign: do you have an ITIN?' — refund-stage pain lives here; the application should start at listing with their tax professional
- 'Entity on the deed?' — a 'foreign' LLC may be a U.S. person (or not); classification gets resolved up front, not assumed
Set the money expectation immediately
The seller should hear the 15%-of-GROSS math from you before they hear it from a settlement statement: on an $800,000 sale, $120,000 of proceeds detours to the IRS at closing as a deposit against actual tax, recoverable by filing. Then the good news: withholding certificates can reduce it when the real tax is lower (start EARLY — the closing can escrow pending the IRS), and the $300k/$1M residence-use exceptions can shrink or zero it when the BUYER's use qualifies and they'll certify.
Buyer-side agents: you have skin here too
Your buyer is the withholding agent the IRS holds liable if FIRPTA gets missed — one more reason the file belongs with a settlement team that screens every seller's status as standing procedure (ours does). And if your buyer signs the residence-use certification for the exception, they should understand it's a real sworn statement, not a formality.