Re: Paypal and SSN number verification
There are two reasons PayPal asks for this. Reason #1 is identity verification. It means they are suspicious of the account. Since there is no way to provide a ⊗⊗⊗⊗ SSN, there is not much you can do here.
Reason #2 is for tax reporting purposes. The IRS (the US government agency that collects taxes) requires that any account that has more than $20,000 in sales and also more than 200 transactions has their sales reported to the IRS for tax purposes. In this case, they will want an SSN (again, this is not possible) an EIN (an SSN for a business - this IS possible) or an ITIN (this is also possible).
So, if they are asking for tax purposes, you can provide an EIN or an ITIN. An EIN is the same thing as an SSN, but for a business. US Citizens can register an EIN with the IRS. If done correctly, the IRS will only verify the BUSINESS NAME matches the EIN.
The second possibility is an ITIN. This is for NON-US companies and individuals to obtain a tax reporting number for IRS purposes. I have no experience with this, so I am not sure how it works. But maybe someone else will chime in, or you can search for ITIN at the IRS website Internal Revenue Service and find out that way.
Of course, the best thing is to not have them ask for an SSN in the first place. For this to work, your sales must be projected to be under $20,000 for the year. As soon as they think you MAY hit that mark, they will ask for it. So, you can't just do $19,000 in sales and stop. You must have sales way under that mark and spread them out. If you had $1,000 in sales in a week, they will probably ask right away. If your sales are $200 per week, probably not. We do not have exact numbers. But slow and steady seems to be the way to go.
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