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Comment by cj | Hacker News Reader

This is the message I see in my account:

> Invalid address. Your business address must be a valid physical address from which you conduct business and cannot be a P.O. Box. This address is not shared publicly and can be your personal address. You may use a P.O. Box as your customer support address.

So in other words, a personal home address should work.

Although its odd your error message is seemingly saying a personal address doesn't work, unless "private mailbox" means a privately rented commercial box, like UPS

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> Although its odd your error message is seemingly saying a personal address doesn't work, unless "private mailbox" means a privately rented commercial box, like UPS.

Yeah, services like Earth Class Mail specifically hand out addresses that say "PMB XXXXXXXX" where PMB is "Private Mail Box".

My personal address isn't my business address. They are different. Mixing the two, while seemingly innocuous, actually can mean opening myself up to liability issues or a good argument that the biz that I operate isn't actually different from me the person. This isn't going to matter in 99% of things, but if you are ever sued, can be used as a reasoning to actually be able to retrieve damages from you the person versus just from the LLC. It's one of the reasons to try to have a strong separation early on in the biz, if you can. The IRS also doesn't like the mixing funds and such with bank accounts. It's the same reasoning, just different domains.

I get that (and agree separating biz and personal as much as possible is 100% best practice)

But there are tons of legitimate businesses operated out of residential addresses (therapists, psychiatrists, chiropractors, etc). It’s not abnormal to use a home address for business purposes.

I’d recommend checking with your lawyer to verify, but I don’t think the address on your stripe (or even bank) account would legally make a difference

I am facing this issue where I received an Earth Class Mail PMB XXXXX address when setting up my Stripe Atlas account and registering my business (I am a US non-resident), and now my account is being threatened to be shut down in 14 days if I don't get a new address. Is this a problem with Earth Class Mail addresses all being P.O box / virtual addresses? Or have I just gotten unlucky with the address I was dealt?

> This address is not shared publicly and can be your personal address.

But who will it be sold to privately?

It will be given away to the government for free

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