E-2 visa business plans, written to the treaty investor criteria

The rule in full, 8 CFR 214.2(e)(15):

For purposes of this section, an enterprise may not be marginal. A marginal enterprise is an enterprise that does not have the present or future capacity to generate more than enough income to provide a minimal living for the treaty investor and his or her family. An enterprise that does not have the capacity to generate such income, but that has a present or future capacity to make a significant economic contribution is not a marginal enterprise. The projected future income-generating capacity should generally be realizable within 5 years from the date the alien commences the normal business activity of the enterprise.

So there are two ways to pass, income or a significant economic contribution, and the texts define neither. On the five years, the preamble to the 1997 INS final rule (62 FR 48138) puts the burden on the investor to present "a business plan showing that the business will provide more than a subsistence living for the investor, within 5 years from the onset date of normal business activities". Each rule text says "should generally", and the USCIS page is not a rule. Whether its date and the regulation's are the same day for you, and how either applies if you buy an established enterprise, are questions for your attorney.

A worked example, on our reading of that wording. You started a business, commenced its normal business activity on 1 March 2025, and apply, or apply again, in October 2026. Five years from 1 March 2025 ends on 1 March 2030, about three years and five months after the application; a five-year plan whose year 1 starts in October 2026 runs to October 2031. So we ask for that date first, treat the nineteen months already operated as actuals, and show where the business stands on 1 March 2030.

One document, written as evidence rather than as a sales pitch, and read alongside the rest of your file. Ours contain an executive summary that states the category and the claim being made; the ownership and entity structure; the source and use of the invested funds, tied line by line to what has been spent or committed; a market analysis with cited sources rather than assertions; an operations plan covering premises, licensing, suppliers and timeline; a staffing plan naming every role, its wage and the month it is hired; five years of financials: profit and loss, cash flow and balance sheet; and appendices for the lease, quotes, licenses and letters your attorney wants attached.

Two things separate it from a lender or investor plan: every figure has to agree with the rest of the plan (the payroll in the financials matches the staffing schedule) and with the rest of your attorney's file, and nothing is asserted without a basis. Our immigration business plan overview explains both.

Is a business plan required, and how long can it be? The treaty investor definitions in 8 CFR 214.2(e)(12) to (16) and 22 CFR 41.51(b) mention neither a plan nor a length. The FAM's suggested checklist for a new business lists "Financial projections for next 5 years, supported by a thorough business plan" but "is meant as a guide only and is not a list of required documentation". All six post instructions linked below ask a new business for a plan, and five cap the page count:

A 30-page plan sent to Port of Spain is six times that post's limit for the plan, so we ask for the post and its current instructions before we write a page.

The work is led by Muhammad Tayyab Shabbir, founder of Avvale, the London consultancy whose US practice is Business Plan Firm, and a 2026 finalist in the Global Innovator Awards, UK SME Global Expansion category. We have written 1,000+ plans for 500+ founders across 30+ countries, and our clients have raised $500M+. Plans are drafted in-house and reviewed line by line before you or your attorney see them.

Outside the United States, a consular officer decides under 22 CFR 41.51(b), with 9 FAM 402.9-6 as guidance; USCIS's own page says "A request for E-2 classification may not be made on Form I-129 if you are physically outside the United States". Inside the United States, USCIS decides a change to E-2 status, or an extension of it, under 8 CFR 214.2(e). We are not attorneys and none of this is legal advice: eligibility is your attorney's question, not ours.

Some tests sit outside a business plan, among them treaty nationality (9 FAM 402.9-10 lists the countries and whether each has E-1, E-2 or both) and intent to depart when E-2 status ends (8 CFR 214.2(e)(2)(iii)). The plan speaks to four:

Which of these your file is weakest on is a legal judgment, and your attorney makes it. What we do is make sure the document answers each one with something checkable rather than with an adjective. 9 FAM 402.9-2 tells consular officers: "If the applicant's qualification for E-1 or E-2 classification is uncertain, you may request whatever documentation is needed to overcome that uncertainty".

No. The treaty investor definitions in 8 CFR 214.2(e)(12) to (16), 22 CFR 41.51(b) and 9 FAM 402.9-6 set no dollar minimum. When the State Department published its rule in 1997 (62 FR 48149), a set minimum dollar figure was considered, and "the agencies overwhelmingly rejected it in favor of the proportionality test". (The dollar figures in 8 CFR 214.2(e)(23) belong to a separate, CNMI-only investor classification.) What 8 CFR 214.2(e)(14) sets instead is three prongs, a substantial amount of capital being one that is:

(i) Substantial in relationship to the total cost of either purchasing an established enterprise or creating the type of enterprise under consideration; (ii) Sufficient to ensure the treaty investor's financial commitment to the successful operation of the enterprise; and (iii) Of a magnitude to support the likelihood that the treaty investor will successfully develop and direct the enterprise. Generally, the lower the cost of the enterprise, the higher, proportionately, the investment must be to be considered a substantial amount of capital.

9 FAM 402.9-6(D) applies prong (i) as a proportionality test, "weighing the amount of qualifying funds invested against the cost of the business". It says "There are no bright line percentages that exist for an investment to be considered substantial", and gives as an example that "investments constituting 100 percent of the total cost would normally qualify for a business requiring a startup cost of $100,000".

What counts toward the investment. Capital "must be irrevocably committed to the enterprise" (8 CFR 214.2(e)(12)). Under 9 FAM 402.9-6(B), "Indebtedness such as mortgage debt or commercial loans secured by the assets of the enterprise cannot count toward the investment, as there is no requisite element of risk", while borrowing secured on your own personal assets may be included. Lease and rent payments count "in an amount limited to the funds devoted to that item in any one month"; a year's rent is not the measure "unless it has been paid in advance".

A worked example. A new business costs $100,000 to bring to the point of being operational, $30,000 of it build-out. Paid from personal funds, that is 100 percent, the FAM's own case. Finance the build-out with a loan secured on the business's equipment and qualifying funds fall to $70,000, or 70 percent. The FAM gives no bright line for 70 percent: the officer judges, and prongs (ii) and (iii) apply at every percentage. Rent paid at $4,000 a month counts as $4,000, not the $48,000 annual cost.

What the plan does with this. No document decides whether an amount is substantial; the officer does, and your attorney advises on it. The plan makes the investment legible: every dollar appears once in the source narrative and once in the use of funds, tied to the lease, quotes, invoices and transfer records in the appendix. On the files we have worked on, the investment section that causes trouble is not the small one, it is the one whose parts do not add up to the figure claimed on the front page.

Three fixed prices, $1,900, $2,400 or $3,200, agreed on the call before anything is written. What moves you between them is the evidentiary load of the filing, not the page count. A single-owner E-2 sits in Essential. The tiers below are the same three we sell on every immigration plan. The fee covers the plan and its financials only: filing fees, attorney fees and the investment itself are separate, and we charge no success fee or percentage of anything. Every tier we sell is listed in one place: see every price we charge.

Filing under a different category, or not sure which yet? The umbrella page covers E-2 alongside L-1, E-1, EB-5 and EB-2 NIW: immigration business plans. Need the financial model or market research as a deliverable of its own? Say so on the call and we quote it with the plan as one fixed price.

The commercial facts of your investment, and nothing from your immigration file or travel history. If a figure is not fixed yet, we label it as an assumption.

If the venture itself is still unproven, with no site in view and a model nobody has tested, a feasibility study comes before an E-2 plan.

An E-2 plan carries the revision terms of every immigration plan we write, set out on the overview: one revision round on Essential, unlimited revisions within the agreed scope on Standard, and a free revision when a Request for Evidence touches the plan. Turnaround is 7 to 14 days from the call, depending on how much of your own information is ready. Give us the filing date on the call; if we cannot meet it, we say so that day.

For an RFE, send us the notice and its deadline the day you receive it: we answer what the officer asked, in the notice's own language, without padding. A new location, a different investment amount, a new entity or a change of category is a different business, which is new work and quoted separately.

If a consular officer asks for more on the plan, or your attorney decides to apply again after a refusal, send us what the post wrote, its current instructions and the date you commenced the normal business activity of the enterprise, which is where 8 CFR 214.2(e)(15) and 9 FAM 402.9-6(E) start the five years.

No one can promise an E-2 approval: the officer decides, and the plan is one exhibit in your attorney's file. What we control is the document.

We would rather say this now than take the fee:

• Your attorney has chosen a different category. Then you want the document written to that category instead: E-1, L-1, EB-5 and EB-2 NIW plans are the same service, written to different criteria; the overview compares all five routes.
• You are not a national of a treaty country. E-2 requires one, and no plan changes that. Ask your attorney about other routes, such as the International Entrepreneur Rule or O-1.
• The reason is not specific to E-2. If you have not retained an immigration attorney, want to know whether you qualify, need a US loan (an SBA loan business plan costs less) or want a guaranteed outcome, the overview says why a plan is the wrong purchase, and the answers are the same for E-2.

Every quotation on this page was checked character for character against the raw text of its source, retrieved on 5 October 2026 and again on 10 October 2026.

• 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(E), the statute, at the Legal Information Institute.
• 8 CFR 214.2(e) and 22 CFR 41.51(b), 2025 annual editions, the treaty investor definitions: 8 CFR and 22 CFR at govinfo.gov.
• 9 FAM 402.9-2, 402.9-6, 402.9-10 and 402.9-11(B) (CT:VISA-2190, 17 February 2026), the guidance to consular officers, the treaty country list and the suggested checklist, at fam.state.gov.
• 62 FR 48138 and 62 FR 48149 (12 September 1997), the INS and State Department final rules, for their preambles.
• USCIS, E-2 Treaty Investors (last reviewed 20 August 2026), for the I-129 rule and its own five-year sentence, at uscis.gov.
• Post instructions, for what each post asks and its page limit: London, Canada, Port of Spain (January 2025 packet), Rome, Paris and Mexico.

Not on this page, because no text we read supports it: any typical investment figure, required number of employees, hiring timeline, income threshold or approval rate.