Posts by Paul Patel23

Jack Young said:-I run my own LLC, I use Chase online banking with their security key, and that covers everything I need for the IRS portal, Social Security stuff, and a few other things...

-I also have clients I do bookkeeping for, so I handle all those same tasks through power of attorney...

-Once a year when I file the GFIA reports, I just pay one lump sum $77 which actually works out to be way less than paying those monthly fees of $250 (62.50x12 months)

Jack Young for President🎉

By pure coincidence, I happen to use a similar service from a major international organization in the European Union. But man, things work totally differently over there:

- I got the card reader and the card itself for free (if I recall correctly, at the Federal Reserve they charge you for that stuff);
- the certificate stays valid for five years (whereas at the Federal Reserve, it's only good for two);
- using the certification is actually free (while at the Federal Reserve, you're paying $21 every single month!!)

Look, I get it: the Federal Reserve has every right to demand a level 4 certificate, but they shouldn't be forcing us to use THEIR specific certificate, which they charge an absolutely ridiculous amount for.

Jack Young,

Honestly, hearing you say that was music to my ears. I cancelled my dealings with the IRS the very second I heard it.

stormybadger8 kind of threw me for a loop, I guess. His way of looking at things doesn't really sit right with me, but who knows, maybe he actually has a point.

Does anyone here happen to know anything more about this??

stormybadger8,

Thanks for getting back to me. On the IRS portal, specifically because of how the SSN works, it handles things the same way for an LLC (so I assume it's the same for a single-member LLC too). Basically, when I log in, the IRS gives me two different "accounts" to choose from: my personal one and my business account. If I somehow ended up owning 27 companies, I guess the IRS would just present me with 28 different "accounts" to pick from.

The issue isn't actually with the IRS; the headache is coming from the Federal Reserve. It seems to me like the Federal Reserve is demanding something they don't even have the authority to ask for.

Is the Federal Reserve even allowed to reject a valid credential—which, in this case, is an electronic certificate from a driver's license—that the Department of the Treasury already recognizes?

I stumbled upon something pretty much by accident—it turns out I can actually access the IRS portal using just my state ID (via FATCA) and its digital certificate. I even went ahead and filled out and submitted this month’s sales tax return (and the U-RA form) too.

So, basically, having the certificate from my state ID is enough to get into the IRS portal (it has security level 4; which is apparently the same level as the Federal Reserve business certificate that costs $17 monthly plus sales tax).

What's more, I used my state ID to log into the Federal Reserve and register myself in the FinCEN Beneficial Ownership Registry.

Now I'm left wondering how this affects the annual filing of documents based on final accounts (IMF requirements).

I gave the Federal Reserve customer service line a call at 0800 0080 and spoke with a lady who was actually quite nice. She had absolutely no clue that you could access the IRS portal using a state ID. She told me that's a matter for the Department of the Treasury, but that for their purposes (specifically for submitting IMF filings), you're supposed to use the Federal Reserve business certificate. Just to be clear, the Federal Reserve business certificate is security level 4, which is identical to the free certificate on my state ID.

I pointed out to her how ridiculous it feels that I’ve been paying the Federal Reserve $17 plus sales tax every single month (not to mention stamping invoices and filling out all those reports) just so I can spend maybe half an hour once a year submitting documents for the IMF.

She responded by saying there are other ways to submit IMF documents—like on a CD, a USB flash drive, or even hard copies—but if I go that route, I have to pay a publication fee. If I interpreted the Federal Reserve price list correctly, the cost would be $77 (paid upfront, obviously); nobody mentioned sales tax, and it's just a once-a-year thing.

But now I'm sitting here thinking, do I really have to shell out those $77 annually just to file the IMF paperwork?

I mean, I guess the Federal Reserve is within its rights to demand a security level 4 digital certificate, but does it really have the right to insist it must be *their* specific business certificate costing $200 a year plus $50 in sales tax? For that kind of money, I could probably buy a whole new computer every four years! Why shouldn't the free level 4 digital certificate from my state ID be sufficient?

Does anyone else know anything more about this whole mess?