Capital is the qualifying amount placed at risk in the enterprise. Filing fees for the investor petition and later for removal of conditions, legal fees, and any administrative charge paid to a project sponsor are costs, not capital, and cannot be counted toward the required investment.
Keep the required amount clean and separate
The single most consequential accounting error in an EB-5 file is treating everything paid out as investment. The required qualifying capital must go into the new commercial enterprise and be at risk there. Money paid to lawyers, to a sponsor as an administrative or subscription fee, or to USCIS as a filing fee leaves the investor's hands but never enters the enterprise as capital, so it must be funded separately and on top.
For a direct project with four members the enterprise's own costs, such as the mill site, equipment and working capital, are deployed capital and belong in the business plan. Government charges are set out in the fee schedule, Form G-1055, and the later petition to remove conditions carries its own fee. The couple's living costs in the United States are outside the analysis entirely.
A budget that shows the qualifying amount, the fees and the family's expenses in three separate columns will survive scrutiny; one that shows a single total will not.