eCommerce Tycoon

**chris714** · 03-13-2007, 07:58 PM

Hey everyone,
Was hoping someone could clarify a few thing's for me. I am currently in the process of building a E-commerce site, and was getting ready to file for a federal tax ID number. when I looked at the form it was for the company name and it said "if your a sole proprietor use your full name" well the next line was "doing business as" or "ficticious name" line. I done some research and the only thing I could come up with was as follows :
"As a sole proprietor, you can conduct business under your own name or under a trade name. For example, let's say I am a plumber. I can conduct business under my own name, Jim Poznak, Plumber. Or, I can conduct business under a trade name, such as EZ Flush. "
So my question was, If I am operating a website as www.mydomainhere.com and I wanted to do business as " My Legal Name here" then I would be ok?
The only thing that bother's me about this whole issue is that I am planning on getting my state sales tax license as well and in order to do that I have to go to the clerk of court in the county I live in, and fill out paper work similar to the Federal Tax Id, well I know everyone there at the cleark of court and really do not want them in my business know what kind of E-commerce site I am having built. It's a small town and I prefer that they not know my "business name" and jsut know that ok, he has a business.. and it's retail etc etc.... but not what it is exactly that I do. Any help or suggestion's would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Chris

**colbyt** · 03-13-2007, 08:22 PM

The correct syntax for what you want is D/B/A not aka.
Doing business as NOT also known as.

All you need to do most places is register the name at your local County Clerks office. This is to ensure no duplicates. Once that is done you are free to use the business name.

All official things like tax returns are filed in the following format:
My Full Name
DBA My Company Name.

As a sole prop use can use your fica number as the tax id number UNLESS you have employees. Then you must dance through the 1000 hoops and get all the numbers.

Ask more if I did not answer all your questions.

**chris714** · 03-13-2007, 08:57 PM

Thanks for the reply. I know the Doing business as was not called "aka" I was reffering to Ficticious name being also know as Doing business as. I was curious is the FICA number you are reffering to my social security number, or my federal tax id number? I was under the impression that I needed a state retail license in order to sale anything on the web, because if someone from in my state ordered, I had to charge them the state tax on their total? So all I really need to do if I understand this , is get my federal tax id # and when I file taxe's I can use my federal tx id # or my SSN# in order to pay taxes since I will not have any employee's. Thanks again for your help.