At least Richard Bachmann understands: postal dropbox problems. (Advice sought.) · 2:46pm May 1st, 2021
I'll keep this short. As some of you know, I have been trying to rent something which would let me receive and send physical mail under the name attached to my FIMFic account. The central purpose of this would likely be the mailing of signed bookplate stickers, effectively allowing me to autograph books via remote. And a few days ago, my best chance slammed a few hundred doors in my face.
I almost had a dropbox rented at a UPS Store branch. Now I'm not going to be capable of renting one at any branch.
They want a sales tax number.
Right. The only way they'll allow me to do this is if I effectively declare myself as a business, or actually incorporate. Or I suppose I could register myself as a non-profit, but that has its own set of issues. Without jumping through a whole other series of hoops -- none of which may actually be passable -- I cannot use a UPS Store dropbox address.
I understand. That's the worst part: I really do get it. It's a security issue, along with fallout from all sorts of things which happened long before I thought about this. The world does not look at pseudonyms as a positive thing. The problem is that in this part of the online age, a pseudonym can just about be the primary public identity.
So I'm asking for advice. I need to rent a dropbox. I can fill out the forms under my real name, but the box must be able to receive mail addressed to this one. And it has to happen without filling out sales tax forms or anything similar, because I don't think the system is exactly set up for this. Even if there's a subclause somewhere, it could take months for recognition.
If you know of a dropbox rental chain which would allow this, let me know what their name is and I'll investigate the local options. Otherwise, any tricks of the trade would come in handy right now.
Oh, and one more thing. I found a couple of places which charge on a per-package basis, along with adding a fee for every bundle of envelopes. So how much you pay depends on how active the dropbox is.
Not just for sending the mail.
For picking it up.
...let's try to avoid those.
For those playing at home, "Richard Bachmann" was a pseudonym used by Stephen King to dunk on those claiming that he was coasting on name recognition. For his trouble, he got at least one person to say Bachmann writes like Stephen King if Stephen King could write.
Why not a post office box? Anything addressed to the box number should get to it, with any name associated with it ignored (so people could address it to
'Estee', PO box NNN, City, NNNNN-NNNN, USAwithout trouble). For high-value items, you'd want tracking and signatures and whatnot, but this doesn't sound like something that would need those features.For forming a business, my understanding is that for your situation you'd want a "Sole Proprietorship". These are among the simplest and lowest-cost to set up; all they are is a way for you to do business under a name that is not your own, without any of the extra protections or features that more complicated forms of business involve. That said, consult your city and state web sites for guidance - I haven't actually set one of these up, so I'm likely missing details. Most places have government organizations intended to help small businesses get started, as well - the city and state web pages should list these, and they'd be good places to ask for advice.
Might not be a bad idea to incorporate yourself for something like this. You'd probably get some tax relief for doing so, seeing as the government works for corporations and not people.
Yep, what 5510317 said. That's basically what I'll be doing. Unless of course you're mailing a ton of things which might by why you need the drop box to handle that for you, but if it's not that much, just mail it yourself with return address to the PO Box.
5510317
That'd be my suggestion. I don't know if there's rules one way or another, but generally the post office isn't going to look at the name on the address, since they don't know if you have family/roommates/etc who might live with you and recieve mail at the same address.
If they needed one, you could fib a little - Estee sounds enough like a name that you could tack something on the end as a surname and it might fly. But, yknow, I don't know if that could get you into trouble, let alone how much if it did.
You could also tell them it's a penname- which is true, and has less stigma than a pseudonym. It might make a difference.
Here's the tricky thing:
All you need in order to have a sales tax number, at least in *most* states, is an account for paying sales taxes. Then you get a DBA (Doing Business As) and file with your state tax ID number.
Here's why that's not as bad as it sounds: You sell everything through Patreon, right?
If you do, Patreon handles it for you, and you're golden! You have zero sales through your taxes, and your account only exists for the purposes of getting the DBA and a business account.
If you don't... uhm... you really should be charging sales tax already 99% of the time.
I just file an annual sales tax report that says "yeah, no taxable sales" and go from there. Or I tax the $275 or so that I manage to sell in 3D prints and commissions and go "yay, I sold something!"
You have a business. It's just that it's a self-employment situation rather than a sales situation for 99% of it, if not 100. But the tax department knows that this is a thing that people have to deal with. At least here in Wisconsin - your state *may* vary... but probably not that much.
5510310
From reading his autobiography, Asimov had roughly the thing happen when he wrote the Lucky Star books under the penname Paul French
Do you not have a post office near where you live? A normal United States Postal Service post office. Because when you address a letter or package to a USPS post office box the person's name is not required to be on the mail.
To: Box Holder*
P.O. Box #
City, State, Zip
*NOT a place holder, you can literally put "Box Holder" here, or "Reaident" or "Person" or just not even have this section.
You have to register it under your legal name and all but to send and receive packages via the box you don't have to use said legal name anywhere on said packages.
(raises hand)
If you're accepting payment electronically, why do you need a physical return address? I mean you could borrow a physical address from somebody in the fandom anywhere and stick that on the bookplate envelopes going out so any *oops!* returned mail goes to (fill in name of trusted person here), right?
This is the Century of the Fruitbat after all. (and it's free)
You can even add a nod to the Great One:
Estee French
some number some street
Camden, NJ 12345
Set up an LLC (Limited Liability Company) in whatever name you choose. Once the IRS assigns you an EIN (Employer Identification Number) you can use that business for mail, to set up business credit (for that you need a Dunn and Bradstreet account, and those can get expensive); using it for the purpose you have in mind should be no problem.
Even here in Mexico, I could just either have a mail forwarding address or a box at the post office. I remember it works similarly in Canada. And it must be legal in the Yanklands too, considering that I can find mail forwarding services specialized on importing crap from Yank providers who don't ship overseas: depending on how much I'd be paying, it can range from a monthly bundle shipped by land (the common "magazine subscription package"), to calling them to look for a given package and forward it immediately, all the way to giving them Carte Blanche to overnight every single package.
Okay, I’m on the wrong side of the world, but if it’s happening locally then they must have got the idea from somewhere...
A number of chains here are adding drop boxes. They are being installed at all the local 7-11 stores. Our major office supply chain also offers a Dropbox service. I’m not sure exactly how it’s set up, but it couldn’t hurt to swing past your local office supply chain store.
Creating a sole proprietorship is straightforward in most states and doesn't significantly complicate tax filings. But if the SP is using a fictitious business name, rather than being named e.g. "Estee's Real Name Consulting", then there's unavoidably a public record linking to your real name (at least in all the states I'm familiar with).
Creating an single-owner LLC may end up costing you significant money - filing fees with the state, required public notifications, perhaps an annual business tax (in California, it's $800/year whether you make money or not), and may or may not complicate your other tax filings significantly (I am just working through this for the first time). It also results in a public record linking to your real name. Probably not a great option unless you're expecting a lot of revenue.
Ditto what Academic Pony, vladspellbinder, etc, said about a P.O. Box at the local post office. As long as the address has the correct P.O. Box number, city, state, and ZIP code, they don't care whose name is actually in the first line. I actually do have a "doing business as" and get things sent to my P.O. Box under my business name, even though the box was/is rented under my real name, and no one has ever said anything.