We are wanting to update our Legal Entity to our LLC and switch our bank account from a personal checking to a business account in the LLC’s name. A missed disbursements could put us out of business quick, so we want to get this right the first time. We have our LLC paperwork from the state, our business license, a bank statement in the LLC’s name, and our EIN letter.
Is there anything else we should have on hand before we initiate the change? When this whole INFORM act thing kicked off, I remember people saying that they hyphenated the legal entity with their name, (“John’s Awesome Widgets - John Doe”) is this still considered a good practice?
Anything else anyone can suggest to be mindful of or to watch out for?
I do not have the answer however, one of the SAS members that have been through this will be by soon.
I did want to welcome you to the SAS forum! Welcome to freedom!
I do have a data point on the Informs Act. When we applied the form was a bit wonky, it ended up putting “NH” in our Corporate name slot. Since once it was entered you could not change that.
Even our postal mail started arriving to “NH” at our address. I decided to let it go and see what would happen. That was way back in June. Since then they did a postcard to us to be sure we were at that address. We got it we gave the code, they thanked us.
Still NH is the business. I don’t think they look as close as we all think they do.
Wait until you have a bank statement for the LLC. If your name is not on the statement, go to the bank and request a letter from them on their letter head stating that {{{your name}}} is the {{{owner}}} of the LLC account {{{ with the account number XYZ}}}. Then create a PDF using that letter as the first page and a complete current bank statement. This PDF will be the one you will need to submit for bank verification.
Your EIN confirmation letter can also prove ownership of your LLC. This is the letter you receive from the IRS after you successfully. Your EIN (Federal Employer Identification Number) is a tax ID number assigned to your business by the IRS. Your EIN confirmation letter will include your LLC’s EIN, business name, and responsible party.
What’s a responsible party, you ask? Your [EIN responsible party] is the person you name on your EIN application who has financial control over your LLC. You may only name one person as your responsible party. If you have a [multi-member LLC] this will likely be the member with the greatest membership interest and/or authority within your LLC. Only your responsible party will be able to use this particular document to prove they own the LLC."
Looks like the EIN confirmation letter might suffice?
I think they want more than just that one thing. However, on that one thing, I can say the IRS issues these with a phone call to them, and they must send the letter to you by snail mail so plan ahead.
We lost ours after 28 years or so, the replacement took us a month a half dozen years ago.
Some good info so far here in this thread. I don’t have any experience in doing this so I won’t guess or comment. Hopefully more great info will be coming your way and welcome to the forum. I really love seeing this community grow.
Now, here’s the important part of your issue:
Once you have all your ducks in a row, get everything ready and submit it the instant you get a payout to reduce the chances of missing the next one.
Articles of organization that the LLC filed. The document usually lists the names of the owners and members. It is sometimes available on the site where the LLC was registered. This is usually the Secretary of State website.
Your name should be at the top of the owners (if more than one owner).
Your name also tracks across the bank statement and EIN confirmation letter.
You may also need to provide a copy of the front and back of your driver’s license / government ID or of your passport.
Welcome to SAS! This thread might also be helpful to you: 🆘️ Most helpful (RE)VERIFICATION 2023 posts. Click the arrow in the topic post for links to other related threads.
a utility bill in the name of the LLC at the business address that matches everything else.
LLC filing that corresponds to Articles of Organization, or whatever your state requires that the IRS accepted
personal identification
I would add
a credit card statement in the name of the LLC (if available)
I would further add that if you have a DBA for your business that you’re using on Amazon, it would be helpful if that DBA is included on the EIN letter.
And as @ASV_Vites said, start the process, with all documents already available, the day after a disbursement is received in your account.
If you plan to update any credit card, bank account, or address information, you might prefer to do that
one change at a time,
before updating your entity,
on the Buyer side of the same account first, and
after sending SS a heads up.
I think that we all make this sound scarier than it really is, but at the same time, we all know too many legitimate Sellers–including SAS members–who have had to wait too long through this process and/or have failed it without useful communication from Amazon.
Looks like we will probably have to wait until we receive the first utility bill before we get things rolling.
We do not have a credit card in the business name.
When we filed our articles of organization with the state, we used lawedepot(dot)com and answered the questions and it populated for us and spit out a form. It didn’t seem very official in all honesty. No notarization or anything like that was required. But it was good enough for the state of GA, hopefully it’s good enough for Amazon.
As for the advice to change things one at a time, then the legal entity, is changing the bank account even an option since it’s in the LLC’s name, and will not match the current legal entity? Or is the letter from the bank with the name of ownership (which would match the legal entity, which currently is a first and last name) along with the statement sufficient to make this change?
How about the hyphenating the names across documents, I.E. Bussiness Name LLC - First Name Last Name . Like I said, I remember some people saying that was helpful, overkill or no? If it’s a good Idea, should this format be consistent across all document’s? If so this would require some changes on our accounts and business license.
I am a registered corporation. However, all my Amazon disbursements come to my personal checking account (I have a special account set aside for only e-commerce activities). Having my personal checking account combined with my entity EIN was not a problem for me when I had to deal with the INFORM Act.
I never had to provide a utility bill. Of course, my entity has been established for years now so I don’t know if that makes a difference.
A few years ago, I needed the EIN confirmation letter to get stuff out of customs.
They IRS office faxed me the letter in a few minutes, but also did the snail mail thing.
I got my stuff out of customs in a few short hours.
The agent was very helpful.
Hmm, I could be to nice. As I recall we were trying to sign up for selling in India with Amazon. Would have worked well for us, but they dropped support for the program before we could start.
Sounds like the they’ve greatly improved the EIN process. You get the letter instantly in PDF form now after registering online. It’s actually probably the easiest part now.