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Glossary

Plain-English definitions of every term that appears in our guides — address compliance, banking, U.S. tax, business formation, and the tools used by non-resident founders. Each term links to longer explanations and to related articles.

Address & Compliance (8 terms)

CMRA
A USPS-registered Commercial Mail Receiving Agency authorized to receive mail on behalf of customers under USPS Form 1583.
PMB
A Private Mailbox unit number (e.g., "PMB 123") that USPS regulations require CMRAs to format into the recipient address.
Form 1583
The USPS notarized application a CMRA must collect from each customer before accepting mail on their behalf.
Registered Agent
A person or company designated to receive legal service of process and state correspondence on behalf of an LLC or corporation.
Commercial Sublease
A written agreement that transfers a defined right to use commercial space from a primary tenant to a subtenant for a specified term.
Physical Operations Hub
Laramie Ledger's positioning: a real Wyoming workspace used as a member's local operations branch, established by commercial sublease — explicitly not a CMRA, not a virtual mailbox.
Address Enrichment
API services like Melissa, LexisNexis, Ekata, and SmartyStreets that classify a U.S. address by type, risk, and ownership signals.
USPS Address Standardization
The USPS rules (CASS / Publication 28) that convert a free-form address into a single canonical, deliverable form.

Banking & Payments (8 terms)

KYC
The legally required process of verifying the identity of an individual customer before opening an account.
KYB
The verification process U.S. financial institutions perform on a legal entity (LLC, corporation, partnership) before opening a business account.
Mercury
A U.S. fintech bank popular with startups and remote founders, offering free business checking with strict address-based KYB.
Wise
A multi-currency money-transfer and business-account platform formerly known as TransferWise.
Stripe Atlas
Stripe's end-to-end U.S. company-formation product that bundles incorporation, EIN, bank account, and Stripe payment processing.
Relay
A U.S. small-business banking platform with up to 20 free checking accounts and integrations with Xero, QuickBooks, and Gusto.
Brex
A U.S. corporate-card and business-account platform originally built for venture-backed startups.
Bluevine
A U.S. small-business banking platform offering free business checking and lines of credit, generally more flexible on address verification than Mercury or Brex.

Tax (10 terms)

EIN
A nine-digit IRS-issued tax identification number for U.S. business entities, equivalent to a Social Security Number for a company.
ITIN
A nine-digit IRS-issued tax identification number for individuals not eligible for a Social Security Number.
Form W-8BEN
The IRS form a non-U.S. individual gives to a U.S. payer to certify foreign status and claim treaty benefits.
Form W-8BEN-E
The IRS form a non-U.S. legal entity gives to a U.S. payer to certify foreign status and claim treaty benefits.
Form 1120
The U.S. corporate income tax return; for foreign-owned single-member LLCs, a pro-forma Form 1120 must be filed alongside Form 5472.
Form 5472
The IRS information return required from any U.S. corporation or foreign-owned U.S. disregarded entity with a 25% or greater foreign shareholder.
Form 1042-S
The IRS information return that U.S. payers issue to non-residents to report U.S.-source income subject to withholding.
Form 1099-K
The IRS information return that payment processors and marketplaces issue when annual gross receipts cross a reporting threshold.
ECI
Income that a non-resident earns through a U.S. trade or business, taxed at U.S. graduated rates rather than the flat 30% withholding.
FDAP
U.S.-source passive income paid to non-residents, generally subject to 30% gross withholding (often reduced by treaty).

Federal & Regulatory (6 terms)

FinCEN
The U.S. Treasury bureau that administers the Bank Secrecy Act and collects the Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) report.
BOI Report
The FinCEN report under the Corporate Transparency Act that discloses each beneficial owner of a U.S. LLC or corporation.
BSA
The 1970 federal law (31 USC 5311 et seq.) that requires U.S. financial institutions to keep records and file reports useful in detecting financial crime.
OFAC
The U.S. Treasury office that administers economic and trade sanctions against targeted countries, regimes, and individuals.
CDD
The FinCEN rule requiring financial institutions to identify and verify the identity of beneficial owners of legal-entity customers.
Patriot Act Section 326
The 2001 USA PATRIOT Act provision requiring financial institutions to implement a Customer Identification Program (CIP) at account opening.

Business Formation (8 terms)

LLC
A U.S. legal-entity form combining the limited liability of a corporation with the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship.
C-Corp
A U.S. corporation taxed under Subchapter C of the Internal Revenue Code, with corporate-level tax on profits and shareholder-level tax on dividends.
S-Corp
A U.S. corporation that elects Subchapter S tax treatment to pass profits through to shareholders' personal returns, avoiding C-Corp double taxation.
Operating Agreement
The internal governing document of an LLC that specifies ownership, management, voting, profit distribution, and dissolution rules.
Articles of Organization
The state-filed document that legally creates a U.S. LLC.
Single-Member LLC
An LLC with only one owner, taxed by default as a disregarded entity (sole proprietorship for tax purposes).
Multi-Member LLC
An LLC with two or more owners, taxed by default as a partnership.
Foreign Qualification
The process by which an LLC formed in one state registers to legally do business in another state.

Tools & Providers (8 terms)

Persona
An identity-verification platform that runs document, biometric, database, and watchlist checks for KYC and KYB.
SignWell
A U.S. e-signature platform with template-based document generation, used by Laramie Ledger for sublease and services agreements.
Proof
The remote online notarization (RON) platform formerly known as Notarize, used for IRS Form 1583 and other notarial acts.
Middesk
A KYB-as-a-service provider that consolidates Secretary of State filings, EIN matches, watchlists, and BOI signals into a single business verification report.
Stripe Identity
Stripe's identity-verification API offering document, selfie, and database checks integrated into the Stripe Dashboard.
Plaid
A bank-account-connectivity API that lets applications verify ownership and access transaction history via consumer login.
Trulioo
A global identity-verification platform that performs KYC and KYB across 195+ jurisdictions via a single API.
doola
A formation-services company specializing in U.S. LLC formation, EIN application, and ongoing compliance for non-residents.

Wyoming (4 terms)

Wyoming LLC
An LLC formed under Wyoming's LLC Act, the first LLC statute in U.S. history (1977) and widely considered the most owner-friendly jurisdiction.
Charging Order Protection
A statutory rule limiting a creditor's remedy against an LLC member to a charging order — the right to receive distributions, not to seize the membership interest.
Wyoming Asset Protection
The combination of charging-order protection, member privacy, and statute-of-limitations rules that make Wyoming a top jurisdiction for protecting business assets.
Wyoming Annual Report
The annual filing every Wyoming LLC must submit to the Secretary of State by the first day of the LLC's anniversary month, with a $60 minimum fee.

Platform Operations (4 terms)

Buy Box
The default purchase option on an Amazon product page, awarded algorithmically to one seller per ASIN at any given moment.
ASIN
A 10-character alphanumeric identifier that Amazon assigns to every product in its catalog (e.g., B08N5WRWNW).
Marketplace Facilitator
A state law category requiring online marketplaces (Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Walmart) to collect and remit sales tax on behalf of third-party sellers.
MoR
The legal entity responsible for processing payments, collecting and remitting sales tax / VAT, and handling refunds and chargebacks for a sale.

Infrastructure (4 terms)

Browser Fingerprinting
A passive identification technique that combines browser, OS, GPU, font, and hardware signals to identify a unique device without cookies.
Residential IP
An IP address assigned by an ISP to a residential customer, generally trusted by fraud-detection systems as belonging to a real user.
Datacenter IP
An IP address assigned by a data center or cloud provider, typically flagged as high-risk by fraud-detection systems.
Anti-Detect Browser
A specialized browser (e.g., Multilogin, AdsPower, Dolphin Anty, GoLogin) that spoofs browser-fingerprint signals to enable multiple isolated identities on one device.