Adding business entities

ATE expects that you have BEs configured in your account before running a transaction. BEs can be imported through the AvaTax Excise portal or using the ImportBusinessEntitiesController API.

A new BE record requires the following information at a minimum:

LegalName: The legal name of the person or entity that owns the business:
EffectiveDate: The date when this BE becomes (or became) valid for use.
CustomId. This is a value used to identify a BE and to generate a direct tie between a concept in ATE and your system of record. A custom ID could be a ship-to number, vendor master number, business associate ID, and so on. It's possible for multiple BEs to have the same custom ID. For example, you may have obsoleted a BE and created a new BE based on a copy of it.
One or more BE ID codes. These codes consist of the following:
- CountryCode: The country code for that ID
- IdType: The type of code that the entity uses for identification. A BE ID code type can be:
  - FEIN
  - SSN
  - CBN
  - CUSTOM (with a max length of 10)
- IdCode: A unique ID to identify this BE ID code combination
Priority values for the custom ID (CustomIdPriority), legal name (LegalNamePriority), and ID code/type combination (IdCodeAndIdTypePriority). The priority values are used for matching a BE. Priority and matching are described in the next section.

In addition to the above fields, the following optional fields may be needed on a case-by-case basis:

TradeName: The name that a business uses for advertising and sales purposes. This can be different than the business's LegalName.
ObsoleteDate: The date when a BE will no longer be valid. For example, you may want to obsolete a BE if its name or address changes, if it's part of a takeover, and so on. In these cases, you can create a new BE based on the updated business information, and you’ll still have a record of the obsolete BE.
AlternateJurisdiction: An alternate jurisdiction identifier that's used by certain tax jurisdictions.
Location information: Include the street-level address for a business. Sometimes, a county is required for county-based taxes.

As mentioned previously, a business entity record must also include at least 1 business account. Each BA can include the following fields:

CountryCode: The 3-digit ISO country code for this BA's location
Jurisdiction: The state or region of this location
BusinessType: A string indicating the type of business (for example, Seller)
BusinessSubType: A string to explain further the business type (for example, Gasoline supplier). This can be jurisdiction specific.
CustomId: An optional way to identify BAs
EffectiveDate: The date when a BA's license number becomes valid
ObsoleteDate: The date when a BA's license number becomes obsolete. This is useful for states that renew licenses every year.
LicenseNumber: State-specific license for a tax exemption, tax deferral, or tax activation or to provide a tax collection allowance.
LicensePercentage: The percentage that should be applied to a tax exemption, tax deferral, tax activate, or tax collection allowance
BusinessAccountMappingId: A unique GUID for identifying a BA