Virtual Address and Scanning Service Before Sales Tax Registration
It is important to note that as of September 1st, 2020, Amazon now requires that sellers provide their business name and official, verified address on their Seller Profile page. Our U.S. virtual address is the perfect solution.
Each State will Trigger Important Mail Regarding Your Sales Tax Registrations.
Once you register for a sales tax permit in each state on average, you will receive 5-10 letters per state per month for the first couple of months. Imagine getting registered in 20 states and receiving over 20 x 5 x 2 or 200 pieces of mail in the first 60 days! You would need to hire a part-time assistant to sort and organize all that mail for you.
Receive your Urgent Mail with our Virtual Address and Scanning Service
The easy solution is to use your business or home address and sort through the mail yourself. If you are outside the U.S., you are also dealing with mailing delays and the possibility of the mail not getting to your foreign address to address labeling issues. Some states mail a code you will need to finish up your tax account to access your sales tax registration number. If you don’t ever receive that important piece of mail, you will call the revenue department in that state. Hold time may be up to 30-60 minutes.
Utilize a Virtual Address to Scan and Link Your Mail with Urgent Notifications
Here are some of the features you should consider before engaging a virtual address and scanning service:
- A service familiar with applying for sales tax permits can recognize the critical mail vs. the informational mail and bring it to your attention.
- A service with different levels of content scans and one you can grow and scale with over time.
- One that gives you the option to have unlimited company names to your account and forward mail if possible.
- A lease or mail service agreement options
- Urgent email notifications for urgent mail that requires responses. See sample or urgent state mail below that you would want to see right away:
- CA Desk Letter Audit
- Texas Notice of Forfeiture of Right to Transact Business (Let’s hope you don’t ever get this one, and if you do, you will want an urgent notification).
- South Carolina Estimated Assessment Notice
- Wisconson Notice of Estimated Tax Amount Due
Our mail service benefits for an e-commerce seller include speed, convenience, and a personal touch. If you choose to have your mail scanned, our team will sort your mail, leaving out all the junk mail, notify you of urgent items that either need a response or are part of the sales tax registration process, and upload your items to your personal mail folder for you to view a full 20-30 days sooner than if the mail was sent directly to you outside of the U.S. We provide the best US. Virtual address service with a personal touch for the most important items. Here are a few examples of actual emails to/from clients (names I’d out for privacy).
Here are a couple of case studies to help you make a better decision as to which service may be best for you:
E-commerce Seller: Scenario 1
You’re a Shopify seller only. You have crossed the economic nexus levels in the 12 states with 200 transactions (before the sales thresholds). This means you need to register for sales tax in 12 states as a remote seller. It would help if you had sales tax permits in these 12 states (see our company SalesTaxSystem.com for permit registrations). When registering for sales tax, the state will send critical letters that contain either your sales tax permit number or codes or PINs to complete your sales tax accounts.
The 12 sales tax registrations will trigger about 3 letters from each state during the first 2 months. That is a total of 3 letters x 12 states x 2 months= 72 letters (can you even imagine all of that coming to your office or home, ugh)… Our virtual address service has an option to scan all those must-have letters. Each letter, if one or 10 pages, counts as one content scan towards our fees.
You will receive your permits, codes, and PINs quickly with our scanning service as your mail will come to our address. You will want to immediately update your Shopify store’s tax settings to start collecting sales tax from your customers vs. having to pay sales tax out of your pocket.
Best Service Recommendation for Scenario 1: Mail Scanning. Our base price is $97.00 per month. Includes 50 content scans (up to 20 pages). You have 72 letters/scans, so 50 scans fall under the content scan overage. Your plan is $2 each for content scan overage or 22 x $2.00=$44.00 additional fees over two months. After two months, your mail will drop dramatically as you get caught up on past sales tax returns and are under the 50 content scans per month (this is important if you are behind on sales tax and have past returns to file because you will receive more mail).
E-commerce Seller: Scenario 2
You’re an Amazon FBA Seller and also selling on your website or a Shopify store. You had prior stock in Florida and registered before October 1st, 2021, for complete amnesty. Washington is a state once you have physical stock. Even though Amazon is collecting, they want you to register and pay the B & O tax. In addition, you have crossed the economic thresholds in 2 other states. This brings your total of 4 states you are planning to register for sales tax.
The 4 sales tax registrations will trigger about 3 letters from each state during the first 2 months. That is a total of 3 letters x 4 states x 2 months= 24 letters. Best Service Recommendation for Scenario 2: Virtual Address. The base price is $67.00 per month. Includes 10 content scans (up to 20 pages). You have 24, so you are over the 10 by 2 each month. Your plan is $3 for each content scan over 10. You have 4 over 10, x $3 per content scan x 4= $12.00 in total extra for the first two months.
Note to E-Commerce Sellers (both U.S. and International):
We strongly recommend all e-commerce sellers to use our Virtual Address/Mail Scanning Service BEFORE you start your business in the U.S. All your mail from the states must come to our office scanned and organized for you and your e-commerce accounting team. This will save you a lot of time and money with important IRS notices, permits, pins, and codes required for compliance.
We recommend using our Virtual Basic Address Service if you are a new foreign e-commerce seller before applying for an EIN. As you grow in sales and eventually have sales tax nexus in a few states, you may upgrade to our Virtual Address or Mail Scanning Service.
Important Advantage: Many banks do not accept a commercial receiving agency (CMRA) for your U.S. address. Typically, a CMRA is similar to a UPS store type service. Our U.S. virtual address is the perfect solution.
Our U.S. Virtual Address Service is NOT a CMRA, which will work to your advantage. Here is where you go check an address service: https://smartystreets.com/products/single-address
Our service will provide your business credibility at the start of your U.S. business when you have mail to be scanned (your EIN letter from the IRS, bank documents, trademark registrations), a separate content scan of $5 per occurrence.
