You can run a background check on someone who only has an ITIN, but the results won’t look like a normal check. Criminal record searches don’t require any tax or Social Security number, so those run fine. Credit checks almost always need an SSN and will usually come back empty when a background check with an ITIN number is attempted in its place. And for employment, an ITIN doesn’t authorize work at all, which is a separate issue from screening.
What an ITIN Is (and Isn’t)
The IRS issues Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers strictly for federal tax purposes. An ITIN does not authorize work in the United States, does not serve as identification outside the tax system, and does not qualify the holder for Social Security benefits.1Internal Revenue Service. Individual Taxpayer Identification Number That narrow purpose is the reason an ITIN behaves so differently from an SSN when it hits a screening system built around SSNs.
Criminal Record Searches Don’t Need a Number
Criminal background checks are the part most people worry about, and here the answer is simple. County, state, and federal criminal records are searched by name, date of birth, and sometimes address. When an SSN is available, screening companies use it to help confirm that the records they pull belong to the right person, but the number itself isn’t what retrieves records from the database.
A screening company can run a criminal search on someone who provides only an ITIN or no number at all. The trade-off is accuracy. Without an SSN to cross-reference, there’s a higher chance of pulling records for someone with the same name or missing records filed under a name variation. Common names make this worse. Screeners narrow results using additional identifiers like prior addresses and aliases.
FBI checks work on a different system entirely. The FBI’s Identity History Summary is matched through fingerprint comparison, so neither an SSN nor an ITIN is relevant to that search.2Federal Bureau of Investigation. Identity History Summary Checks Frequently Asked Questions
Credit Checks Usually Fail With an ITIN
Credit reports are where the ITIN question gets tricky. The three major bureaus can technically create credit files linked to ITINs, and some creditors do report account activity under an ITIN. But pulling a report with an ITIN in place of an SSN is unreliable. Experian has stated that an ITIN submitted in the Social Security Number field would be “recognized as an invalid Social Security number.”3Experian. Can You Check Your Credit Score Without a Social Security Number? In practice, a credit check submitted with an ITIN will often return no data, partial data, or fail to process.
If you’re an ITIN holder and lenders have been reporting your account activity to the bureaus using your ITIN, you may have a credit file. Whether a landlord’s or employer’s screening company can reach it depends on how that company submits the query. Many screening platforms are built to accept only SSN-formatted numbers, and an ITIN submitted in that field won’t match.
If you need your own credit report and don’t have an SSN, Experian allows you to request it by mail with a government-issued ID and a recent utility bill or bank statement instead of a number.3Experian. Can You Check Your Credit Score Without a Social Security Number?
For landlords and employers running credit checks on applicants who have only an ITIN, expect the credit portion to come back empty. That doesn’t mean the applicant has bad credit. It means the system wasn’t built for ITIN-based lookups.
For Employers: Screening Is Not Work Authorization
Employers need to keep two processes separate: the background check and employment eligibility verification. ITINs behave very differently in each.
For the background check itself, the same rules above apply. Criminal searches are name-based. Credit checks will likely fail. The bigger issue is Form I-9. Every U.S. employer must verify that new hires are authorized to work, and ITINs play no role in that process. E-Verify will not accept an ITIN; the system requires a valid Social Security Number to create a case, and an ITIN card is not an acceptable document for Form I-9.4E-Verify. My Employee Entered a Set of Numbers in the Social Security Number Field on Form I-9 If an employee presents an ITIN card in place of a List A, B, or C document, the employer must ask for acceptable employment authorization documentation from the official list.5USCIS. Form I-9 Acceptable Documents
Treating an ITIN as an SSN risks both I-9 compliance violations and E-Verify processing failures. It’s one of the most common and consequential mistakes in this area.
For Landlords: Expect an Empty Credit File
Landlords screening applicants who provide an ITIN face a practical gap. The criminal portion of a tenant screening will work normally because it doesn’t depend on any number. The credit check will probably return no data. That leaves incomplete information, which is frustrating but isn’t itself a legal basis to reject the applicant.
How you handle this matters. The Fair Housing Act prohibits housing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, and disability.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 US Code 3604 – Discrimination in the Sale or Rental of Housing and Other Prohibited Practices Immigration status is not explicitly listed as a protected class in the statute, but the Department of Justice has noted that national origin discrimination can include bias based on a person’s country of birth or ancestry.7Department of Justice. The Fair Housing Act Applying different screening standards to ITIN holders could overlap with national origin discrimination if it disproportionately affects people from certain countries.
The safest approach is to apply the same criteria to every applicant. If a credit report comes back empty for an ITIN holder, consider alternative evidence of financial responsibility like bank statements or rental payment history, and offer the same flexibility to any applicant whose credit check returns insufficient data.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act applies to tenant screening the same way it applies to employment. If you use a third-party screening company, you must give the applicant written disclosure and get authorization before pulling the report. If you deny the application based on the results, the applicant must receive notice of the adverse action, the name of the reporting agency, and a statement that the agency didn’t make the decision.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 US Code 1681m – Requirements on Users of Consumer Reports
Your Rights If the Report Is Wrong
Whether a check uses your SSN, your ITIN, or just your name, the Fair Credit Reporting Act protects you the same way. Consumer reporting agencies must follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of the information in their reports.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 US Code 1681e – Compliance Procedures That matters more for ITIN holders, where the absence of an SSN raises the risk of records being mismatched.
Anyone pulling a report also needs a permissible purpose under the statute, such as evaluating a rental application or a credit transaction the consumer initiated.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681b – Permissible Purposes of Consumer Reports If a company takes adverse action against you based on a report — denying a job, an apartment, or credit — they must notify you, identify the reporting agency, and tell you that you have the right to a free copy of your report within 60 days and to dispute any inaccurate information.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 US Code 1681m – Requirements on Users of Consumer Reports If your ITIN got confused with someone else’s records or matched to the wrong person, you can dispute those errors directly with the reporting agency.
Be Careful Where You Share Your ITIN
Because an ITIN won’t improve the results of most background checks, there’s rarely a good reason to hand it to a landlord or a screening company. Federal tax confidentiality law treats returns and “return information” as confidential, and return information includes a taxpayer’s identity and data collected by the IRS in connection with a return.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 US Code 6103 – Confidentiality and Disclosure of Returns and Return Information That protection restricts what the IRS and government employees can do with your number; it doesn’t stop a private landlord or employer from asking, and it doesn’t stop them from misusing what you volunteer.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 US Code 7213 – Unauthorized Disclosure of Information
If an application asks for a “Social Security Number,” putting your ITIN in that field is more likely to cause processing errors than to help. Ask whether the screening can be run by name and date of birth instead. For identity verification where a number isn’t the point, a passport or other government-issued ID often does the job without feeding your tax identification number into a system that wasn’t designed for it.