Does Form D show my home address?

It shows whatever address you enter. Item 3 asks for 'the full name and address' of each executive officer, director, and promoter, and the instruction does not say whether that is a business or a residence address. If a founder enters a home address in Item 3, or as the company's principal place of business in Item 2, that address is in the public filing.

Can I use a PO box on Form D?

Not for Item 2. The instruction for the issuer's principal place of business says 'Post office box numbers and "In care of" addresses are not acceptable'. The Item 3 instruction for related persons asks for an address without repeating that sentence, but the fields under Item 3 are labeled Street Address 1 and Street Address 2, and we found no staff interpretation on whether a post office box is accepted there. Item 12 asks for a street address for anyone paid sales compensation.

Do I have to amend Form D when I move?

It depends on which address and whether the offering is still open. Rule 503(a)(3)(ii)(A) says no amendment is required for a change in the address of a related person listed in Item 3. A change in the issuer's Item 2 address is not on the exception list, so it requires an amendment 'as soon as practicable' while the offering continues. No amendment is required for a change that occurs after the offering terminates. Any amendment must carry current information in every item.

Does a SAFE round require a Form D?

Rule 503(a)(1) applies to any issuer offering or selling securities in reliance on Rule 504 or Rule 506, and the fifteen-day period runs from the first sale, which the form defines as the date the first investor 'is irrevocably contractually committed to invest'. The SEC's small business glossary describes a SAFE as an agreement in which the company 'promises to give the investor a future ownership interest in the company if certain triggering events occur'. Whether a particular SAFE round relies on Rule 504 or Rule 506 is a question for the company's counsel; if it does, the notice is due on that schedule.

Does the SEC charge a fee to file Form D?

No. The FAQ says the SEC does not charge any filing fee for a Form D notice or amendment, and that paper filings of Form D are not accepted. States that require a notice filing may charge their own fees.

Is SEC Form D Public? Which Form D Address Fields Go on EDGAR, Whose Address Each One Is, and Why Item 3 Deserves a Decision Before Your First Sale

Q: Is SEC Form D public?

Yes. The SEC's 'What is Form D?' page says that after filing, 'the company's Form D will be publicly available on EDGAR', and the Division of Corporation Finance's FAQ says all Form D filings, including their accession numbers, are publicly available through the SEC's filing search. The SEC also publishes quarterly Form D data sets extracted from the filings.

Q: Can I remove my address from a filed Form D?

Generally no. The Form D FAQ says a filed Form D 'generally cannot be withdrawn' and that an issuer 'cannot request confidential treatment for any information required by Form D'. The one removal path the FAQ names is Rule 15 of Regulation S-T, under which the Commission may redact or remove a submission containing personally identifiable information 'that if released may result in financial or personal harm to an individual'. The FAQ describes that as very rare, and the SEC's filer guide on correcting or deleting a filing says staff 'will not delete or redact' addresses and that a 'personal telephone number or home address' on its own 'is not considered a significant risk of financial or personal harm to an individual'. A filer who asks for removal anyway has to show a risk beyond the information being public.

Short answer

Yes. The SEC's Form D page says that after filing, 'the company's Form D will be publicly available on EDGAR', and the Form D FAQ says a filed Form D 'generally cannot be withdrawn' and that an issuer 'cannot request confidential treatment for any information required by Form D'. Three items on the form ask for a street address. Item 2 asks for 'a full street address of the issuer's principal place of business', and says post office boxes and 'in care of' addresses are not acceptable. Item 3 asks for 'the full name and address' of each executive officer, director, and promoter, and the instruction does not say whether that address is a business or a residence. Item 12 asks for the street address of anyone paid to sell the securities. Under Rule 503(a)(3)(ii)(A), a later change to a related person's address does not by itself require an amendment, and the original filing stays on EDGAR as it was on the day of filing. Any amendment filed for another reason must carry current information in every item, Item 3 included.

Get your US address →

Key takeaways

Form D is the notice an issuer files under Rule 503 of Regulation D within 15 calendar days after the first sale in an offering that relies on Rule 504 or Rule 506. The SEC's 'What is Form D?' page says that after filing, 'the company's Form D will be publicly available on EDGAR'. There is no filing fee, and paper filings are not accepted.
Three items ask for a street address. Item 2 is the issuer's principal place of business, and the instruction says 'Post office box numbers and "In care of" addresses are not acceptable'. Item 3 is 'the full name and address' of each executive officer, director, and promoter, and the instruction does not say business or residence. Item 12 is the street address of each person paid a commission or similar compensation for sales, including finders. A founder who runs the company is a related person under Item 3 whatever title is used, because the instruction says 'title alone is not determinative', and Rule 405 defines a promoter as a person who 'takes initiative in founding and organizing the business or enterprise of an issuer'.
The Form D FAQ answers the withdrawal question directly: 'Generally, no. Once filed, the Form D will be publicly available on EDGAR and generally cannot be withdrawn.' The same FAQ says confidential treatment cannot be requested for any Form D information. The one removal path the FAQ names is Rule 15 of Regulation S-T, which lets the Commission redact or remove a submission that contains personally identifiable information 'that if released may result in financial or personal harm to an individual'. The SEC's EDGAR filer guide on correcting or deleting a filing says that staff 'will not delete or redact, among other things, duplicate filings, tagging, accession numbers, contact details, addresses, and confidential information', and that a 'personal telephone number or home address' in a public filing, on its own, 'is not considered a significant risk of financial or personal harm to an individual'.
Rule 503(a)(3)(ii)(A) says no amendment is required for a change in 'the address or relationship to the issuer of a related person identified in response to Item 3'. A change to the issuer's own Item 2 address is not on that exception list, so while the offering continues it calls for an amendment 'as soon as practicable'. No amendment is required for any change that occurs after the offering terminates. If you file an amendment for another reason, Rule 503(a)(4) requires current information in every item.

A founder who has closed a first check usually meets Form D as a deadline. The lawyer or the platform says the notice is due within 15 calendar days, costs nothing, and takes an hour. What the form does with the addresses on it is rarely part of that conversation.

The first page of Google results does not fill the gap. When we opened the results for 'form d filing address public' on September 5, 2026, nine results came back, and the eight that were about the form were two SEC pages, an Investor.gov glossary entry, a Deloitte accounting reference, a law firm blog, a filing agent's explainer, an Investopedia article, and a JD Supra alert. The Investor.gov glossary entry says the form includes 'the names and addresses of the company's executive officers'. At least three of the eight reproduce or paraphrase the rule's list of changes that do not call for an amendment: the SEC's Form D FAQ, which is one of the two SEC pages, the Deloitte reference, and the law firm blog. That list names the Item 3 and Item 12 addresses. Of the seven whose full text we could open, none puts the three address lines side by side, says whose address each line is, or says what the Item 3 instruction does and does not require.

For this article we read the current Form D and its item-by-item instructions, Rule 503 and Rule 507 of Regulation D, Rule 15 of Regulation S-T, the Division of Corporation Finance's Form D FAQ, which this article calls the Form D FAQ, the 2008 release that moved the form onto EDGAR, the staff interpretations that touch the form, and the EDGAR filer guides on getting an account, keeping company information current, and correcting or deleting a filing. We also opened the raw XML of a Form D filed on September 4, 2026 and the public JSON record that EDGAR keeps for each filer, to see which fields carry an address after filing. We did not survey state notice filings, and we say so where it matters.

What Form D is, and when the fifteen-day clock starts

Form D is a notice of an offering that has already been exempted from registration. A company that sells stock, convertible notes, or other securities without registering them with the SEC relies on an exemption, and Regulation D offers three: Rule 504, Rule 506(b), and Rule 506(c). Rule 503(a)(1) says an issuer relying on Rule 504 or Rule 506 'must file with the Commission a notice of sales containing the information required by Form D' for each new offering, 'no later than 15 calendar days after the first sale of securities in the offering'. If the fifteenth day is a Saturday, Sunday, or holiday, the due date is the next business day.

The form's own instruction to Item 7 defines the first sale: it is 'the date on which the first investor is irrevocably contractually committed to invest, which, depending on the terms and conditions of the contract, could be the date on which the issuer receives the investor's subscription agreement or check'. The instructions also say an issuer 'may file the notice at any time before that if it has determined to make the offering'. For the address question this is the useful sentence. You do not have to wait for the deadline to decide what goes in the address fields, and the decision is easier to make before a signed document starts the clock.

Two facts from the SEC's Form D FAQ frame the stakes. First, the SEC does not charge a fee for a Form D notice or an amendment, and paper filings are not accepted, so the notice is filed on EDGAR or not at all. Second, the FAQ says the filing requirement 'is not a condition to the availability of the Regulation D exemptions under Rule 504, Rule 506(b) or Rule 506(c)'. The consequence of not filing sits in Rule 507. Under Rule 507(a), the Rule 504 and Rule 506 exemptions become unavailable to an issuer that has been 'subject to any order, judgment, or decree of any court of competent jurisdiction' enjoining it for failure to comply with Rule 503, and Rule 507(b) lets the Commission decline to apply that result 'upon a showing of good cause'. A missed deadline by itself does not trigger it; a court order does. The FAQ asks issuers who missed the deadline to 'make a good faith effort to file the Form D as soon as practicable'.

The three address lines, and whose address each one is

Form D has sixteen items. Three of them ask for a street address, and the three addresses are not the same kind.

Item 2 is titled 'Principal Place of Business and Contact Information'. The instruction reads: 'Enter a full street address of the issuer's principal place of business. Post office box numbers and "In care of" addresses are not acceptable. Enter a contact telephone number for the issuer.' This is the company's address, and the instruction ties it to the place where the business is principally conducted. It is also the line that carries a phone number.

Item 3 is titled 'Related Persons'. The instruction reads: 'Enter the full name and address of each person having the specified relationships with any issuer and identify each relationship'. The relationships are 'each executive officer and director of the issuer and person performing similar functions (title alone is not determinative) for the issuer, such as the general and managing partners of partnerships and managing members of limited liability companies', and 'each person who has functioned directly or indirectly as a promoter of the issuer within the past five years'. The fields under Item 3 are Last Name, First Name, Middle Name, Street Address 1, Street Address 2, City, State/Province/Country, and ZIP/Postal Code, followed by checkboxes for the relationship. The instruction does not say business address, and it does not say residence.

Item 12 is titled 'Sales Compensation'. It applies when someone has been or will be paid 'any commission or other similar compensation in cash or other consideration in connection with sales of securities in the offering, including finders'. For each such person the form asks for a name, a street address, the states in which the person has solicited or intends to solicit investors, and, where one exists, a CRD number, the identifier that FINRA's Central Registration Depository assigns. A startup that raised from investors directly, with no broker or finder, leaves Item 12 empty; the staff's interpretation 130.15 says an issuer in that position 'should not enter any information in any of the fields under Item 12'.

Form D item	Whose address	What the instruction says about the address	Update rule after filing (Rule 503(a)(3))
Item 2, Principal Place of Business and Contact Information	The issuer, the company itself	'A full street address of the issuer's principal place of business.' Post office boxes and 'in care of' addresses 'are not acceptable'. A contact telephone number goes on the same item.	Not on the exception list. A change while the offering continues requires an amendment 'as soon as practicable'. No amendment for a change after the offering terminates.
Item 3, Related Persons	Each executive officer, director, and promoter, as individuals	The instruction asks for 'the full name and address of each person' with the listed relationship. No business-or-residence qualifier in the current instruction. The paper Temporary Form D that the 2008 release kept available until March 2009 labeled this line 'Business or Residence Address'.	On the exception list, paragraph (A). A change in 'the address or relationship to the issuer of a related person' does not require an amendment.
Item 12, Sales Compensation	Each broker, dealer, or finder paid for sales	Name, CRD number, street address, and the states of solicitation. Left blank when no one is paid sales compensation.	On the exception list, paragraph (D). A change in 'any address or state(s) of solicitation shown in response to Item 12' does not require an amendment.

The three Form D items that hold a street address, from the Form D item-by-item instructions and 17 CFR 230.503(a)(3), read on September 5, 2026.

The one-person startup

A founder who runs the company is a related person under Item 3, and usually under more than one heading. Rule 405 under the Securities Act, which the form's general instructions say supplies the meaning of terms 'used but not defined in this form', defines a promoter as a person who 'takes initiative in founding and organizing the business or enterprise of an issuer', and an executive officer as the president or any officer 'who performs a policy making function'. A founder who also sits on the board is a director as well. The instruction says 'title alone is not determinative', so calling yourself a member or a manager does not change that. Item 3 is where your own name goes, next to whatever address you type. Item 2 asks for the company's address. For a company run from the founder's home, the two lines can end up with the same address, and that is the situation the rest of this article is about.

Ready to set up your business address?

See which US cities fit — about a minute, no card needed.

See your options — no card →

Business or residence: what the instructions say, and what they do not

The Item 2 instruction is specific. It asks for the street address of the principal place of business, it rules out post office boxes, and it rules out 'in care of' addresses. As we read it, this line is asking where the company is actually run, and a mailbox that only receives mail for the company is not that place. The adopting release points the same way. In Release No. 33-8891 the Commission wrote that Item 2 information 'is not collected for mailing purposes', that the purpose of the information 'is to allow securities enforcement authorities to determine the location of the issuer's operations and personnel responsible for the offering', and that post office boxes and 'care of' addresses 'do not provide this information'. It also turned down a bar association request to allow a 'care of' address for an issuer that 'operates out of another entity's office', telling such an issuer that it 'must make arrangements to provide acceptable place of business and contact information'. We did not find a staff interpretation that softens the phrase 'principal place of business' for a remote company, and the staff interpretations that touch Form D, fifteen numbered 130.01 through 130.15 under Securities Act Forms and eight numbered 257.01 through 257.08 under Securities Act Rules, with one in each set withdrawn in March 2025, are about multiple issuers, the minimum investment, investor counts, offering amounts, sales commissions, foreign currency, entity type, signatures, filing timing, the first sale date, amendments, Item 12, whether filing is a condition of the exemption, and covered security status. None of them addresses Item 2 or Item 3.

The Item 3 instruction is not specific. It asks for a name and an address and stops there. The paper version was more explicit. The 2008 adopting release kept a paper Temporary Form D (17 CFR 239.500T) available for filings made between September 15, 2008 and March 16, 2009, and the text of that form, reproduced in the release, labeled the related person block 'Business or Residence Address (Number and Street, City, State, Zip Code)'. The electronic form dropped that label and kept the address fields. Nothing in the current instruction requires a residence address for a related person, and nothing in it prohibits a business address. That is our reading of the text; the Commission has not published an interpretation on the point that we could find.

The adopting release does say what Item 3 is for. In Release No. 33-8891, the Commission explained that it was dropping the old requirement to list 10 percent equity holders. It gave three reasons, and one of them was privacy: 'issuers that are not reporting companies have raised privacy concerns' about that item, and 'the widespread availability of the information on our Web site may raise additional privacy concerns for these companies as they seek to raise capital through a private offering'. Four commenters, including state regulators, objected to the deletion, and the Commission went ahead with it. It kept executive officers, directors, and promoters, and wrote that the change 'should result in public reporting of all of a company's principal policymakers'. A footnote records that issuers had asked for confidential treatment of the 10 percent holder information under Securities Act Rule 406 and that the Commission had 'denied such requests consistently because the information currently is required by Form D'. The same footnote estimated that about 95 percent of the companies that filed Form D notices in 2006 were private companies.

Put those three texts together and the picture for a founder is this. The company's address in Item 2 has to be a real street address where the business is principally conducted. The founder's address in Item 3 is whatever the founder enters, the form does not insist that it be a home, and the Commission designed the item to make the company's decision makers publicly identifiable.

Where the addresses go after you press submit

'Publicly available on EDGAR' is the SEC's phrase, from its 'What is Form D?' page, and it describes more than a web page you can click through to. A Form D is filed as structured data. When we opened the primary document of a Form D filed on September 4, 2026, the XML contained an issuerAddress element with street1, city, stateOrCountry, and zipCode children, and, inside each relatedPersonInfo block, a relatedPersonAddress element with the same children next to the person's name. The FAQ says all Form D filings, 'including their accession numbers', are available through the SEC's filing search.

The SEC also republishes the data in bulk. Its Form D Data Sets page offers quarterly downloads extracted from the XML portion of the form and, in the page's words, 'presented without change from the "as-filed" submissions and in a flattened format'. The page's heading reads September 2009 to June 2026, and the files it lists go back to the first quarter of 2008. An address entered on the form is therefore held in three formats: the filing as EDGAR displays it, the XML the filing is made of, and the quarterly files that anyone can download and load into a spreadsheet.

There is a second place an address goes that is not one of the form's items. Before a company can file anything on EDGAR it needs an EDGAR account and a CIK number, both of which it gets by submitting Form ID. The CIK is the Central Index Key that EDGAR assigns to each filer. The SEC's Form D page says it plainly: 'Please note, if the application is granted, some information from Form ID will become publicly available such as the filer's business and mailing addresses.' EDGAR shows those two addresses on the company's filing page. The SEC's public submissions feed at data.sec.gov returns them as well; the JSON record for each filer has an 'addresses' object with a 'business' entry and a 'mailing' entry, each with street, city, state, and ZIP fields. We confirmed that on two Form D filers on September 5, 2026. The SEC's guide on maintaining company information adds that filers 'have an ongoing obligation to maintain accurate information on EDGAR, including but not limited to a filer's current name, business mailing address, and business email address', and that changes to that information 'will be visible to the public only after the filer makes a public filing'. The 2008 release anticipated the link between the account and the form: the filing system 'will replicate information provided by the filer in the course of obtaining the identifying information needed to access the new online filing system' into the Item 2 and Item 3 fields, and 'the filer will be able to make changes to such information'. The SEC's Form ID guide confirms the same thing in the one place it offers an exception: a company applying only to submit a draft registration statement can select a box, and 'Selecting Yes prevents a new CIK number and related EDGAR account information from becoming public on SEC.gov until after a public filing is made'. A company filing a Form D is making a public filing, so that exception does not apply to it.

For a company that pays no one to sell its securities, that leaves two addresses on the form, plus two on the account. A founder who wants to keep a home address out of the public record has to make a decision on each of the four, and the Item 2 instruction is the one that constrains the choice.

Form D Item 2: the issuer's principal place of business. Street address, no PO box, no 'in care of'.
Form D Item 3: the address of each related person. The instruction says 'address' and no more, and the fields under it are labeled Street Address 1 and Street Address 2.
EDGAR account business address: entered on Form ID. The SEC's Form D page says the filer's business and mailing addresses become publicly available once the application is granted, and the data.sec.gov submissions record carries both.
EDGAR account mailing address: same source, same visibility.

What you cannot take back

The Form D FAQ has a question titled 'Can an issuer withdraw or delete a Form D filed on EDGAR?' The answer is: 'Generally, no. Once filed, the Form D will be publicly available on EDGAR and generally cannot be withdrawn. In very rare cases the staff may remove a Form D filing from EDGAR if it meets the requirements of Rule 15 of Regulation S-T (17 CFR 232.15).' The next question asks whether an issuer can request confidential treatment for any information required by Form D. The answer is one word: 'No.'

Rule 15 of Regulation S-T is the SEC's rule on administering EDGAR, and paragraph (a)(1) is the part that matches what the FAQ describes. It says that if the Commission 'determines that a submission contains personally identifiable information that if released may result in financial or personal harm to an individual', the Commission 'may redact such information from the submission, prevent dissemination of the submission, and/or remove the submission from the Commission's public website'. That is a harm standard, applied by the Commission at its discretion, and the FAQ describes its use as very rare. The SEC's EDGAR filer guide on correcting or deleting a filing, last reviewed on March 4, 2026, says how the staff reads it. Staff 'will not delete or redact, among other things, duplicate filings, tagging, accession numbers, contact details, addresses, and confidential information', and the list is 'not exhaustive'. The guide also states that the inclusion of a 'personal telephone number or home address' in a public filing, by itself, 'is not considered a significant risk of financial or personal harm to an individual'. The filer 'must demonstrate to SEC staff a significant risk of financial or personal harm to an individual beyond the existence of the information in the public domain'. The same guide adds that staff 'only has the ability to correct public filings on EDGAR and not data already disseminated via the PDS or extracted from public EDGAR by third parties', the PDS being EDGAR's public dissemination service, and that after a corrective filing the original and the correction 'typically both remain on EDGAR'.

The practical reading is the one the form's own history supports. The Commission was already refusing confidential treatment for the 10 percent holder information before the electronic form existed, the current FAQ refuses it for any Form D information, the electronic form was built so that related persons are publicly reported, and the result is republished in bulk. An address that goes on the form should be one you are content to have in a record you generally cannot pull back.

Which address changes call for an amendment, and which do not

Rule 503(a)(3) lists three situations that require an amendment while an offering is continuing: to correct a material mistake of fact or error 'as soon as practicable after discovery', to reflect a change in the information in the notice 'as soon as practicable after the change', and annually, 'on or before the first anniversary of the filing of the notice of sales on Form D or the filing of the most recent amendment to the notice of sales on Form D, if the offering is continuing at that time'. Paragraph (a)(2) adds that an issuer may file an amendment at any time.

The change rule has an exception list, and two of the three address lines are on it. Paragraph (a)(3)(ii)(A) excepts 'the address or relationship to the issuer of a related person identified in response to Item 3'. Paragraph (D) excepts 'any address or state(s) of solicitation shown in response to Item 12'. The issuer's Item 2 address is not on the list. The rule also says no amendment is required 'to reflect a change that occurs after the offering terminates'.

For a founder the rule splits by address. If you move after filing and the offering is over, nothing in Rule 503 asks you to update the notice, and the address you entered stays in the filing, in its XML, and in the quarterly data sets as it was on the day you filed. If you move while the offering is still open, a change to the company's Item 2 address requires an amendment, and a change to a related person's address does not. Either way, an amendment filed for any reason resets everything: Rule 503(a)(4) says an issuer that files an amendment 'must provide current information in response to all requirements of the notice of sales on Form D regardless of why the amendment is filed', and the staff's interpretation 130.14 repeats the point. The Form D FAQ says the same about the form as a whole: an issuer that files an amendment 'must respond to all items of the Form D with current information as of the date the amendment is filed'.

The amendment does not replace the earlier filing. Both stay on EDGAR under the company's CIK, so an address that appeared in the original notice remains visible in that document after the amended one is filed. That is a consequence of the withdrawal answer above, and it is why the decision belongs before the first filing rather than after it.

State notice filings

The federal notice is not the end of the paperwork. The Form D FAQ explains that offerings under Rule 506(b) and Rule 506(c) 'are not subject to state registration and review', but that they remain subject to 'state requirements that may require the issuer to file a notice and a consent to service of process with the states', plus any state fees. The form's general instructions say a copy must also be filed 'with the state(s) requiring it', and point to the North American Securities Administrators Association, NASAA, for state filing information. The FAQ mentions NASAA's Electronic Filing Depository, through which filers can submit state notice forms and fees to participating states.

We did not check what each state regulator publishes from those notices, and we do not make a claim about it here. In each state that requires a notice, that notice is a second copy of the same address fields, and what a given state posts is a question to put to that state's securities regulator or to your counsel before you file.

A timeline for a founder raising on SAFEs or a priced round

The pieces above resolve into an order of operations, whether the round is priced or built on SAFEs, the simple agreements for future equity many seed rounds use. The form itself sets the last step, and the EDGAR account sets the first.

1Apply for EDGAR access with Form ID before the round closes. The SEC's Form D page tells companies to 'allow sufficient time for the SEC staff to process the Form ID application' and to consider submitting it 'as soon as you determine that the company intends to raise money'. The business address and mailing address you enter on Form ID become the EDGAR account addresses.
2Decide the Item 2 address. It has to be a street address where the company's business is principally conducted, and it cannot be a post office box or an 'in care of' address. If that is the founder's home today, that is the address the form asks for as we read it. Entering a mailbox in its place does not change where the business is conducted.
3Decide the Item 3 address for each officer, director, and promoter, including yourself. The instruction asks for an address and does not specify residence. A street address where you receive mail in your capacity as an officer satisfies the text as we read it, and it keeps your home off the line that the rule does not require you to amend when that address changes.
4Fill in Item 12 only if someone is being paid to sell the securities. Otherwise leave it blank, as interpretation 130.15 directs.
5File within 15 calendar days after the first investor is irrevocably committed, or earlier. Rule 503 keys off the exemption and not the instrument, so if the round relies on Rule 504 or Rule 506, the clock starts at that first commitment, which the form says can be the day the company receives the signed subscription agreement or the check. The form can be filed before the first sale if the company has decided to make the offering.
6Calendar the anniversary. If the offering is still continuing a year later, an annual amendment is due, and it has to carry current information in every item, including every address.

Where a non-residential business address fits, and where it does not

A business address service gives a company a street address at a commercial building where mail is received, scanned, and forwarded. Measured against the four addresses listed above, that kind of address fits Item 3 on our reading, fits the account's mailing address by definition, and does not fit Item 2 on its own. What Form ID requires for the account's business address is a question we did not take up for this article. Item 12 sits outside that count because it holds a paid seller's address and stays blank when no one is paid to sell.

On our reading of the instruction, a founder who is an officer and director can list, under Item 3, the address where the company receives its mail as the address where that officer can be reached. The instruction asks for an address, the paper Temporary Form D of 2008 accepted a business address on that line, and the Commission's stated purpose for the item, public reporting of who runs the company, is met by the name and the relationship rather than by a home street name.

It does not fit Item 2 on its own. The instruction asks for the principal place of business and excludes mailboxes and 'in care of' arrangements, and as we read it a location that only receives the company's mail is not the place where the business is principally conducted, a reading the 2008 release supports when it says the item exists to locate 'the issuer's operations and personnel responsible for the offering'. A company whose officers actually work from a serviced office at that address is in a different position from one that only collects mail there, and the form is asking about the first situation. When the 2008 release turned down the bar association's request, its objection was to the 'care of' form of the address, and it told an issuer that operates out of another entity's office to 'make arrangements to provide acceptable place of business and contact information'. As we read it, an office the company works from is such a place. We do not offer a reading under which a mail-only address satisfies Item 2, and we would be wary of anyone who does.

Our guide on which parts of an LLC filing become public record covers the state side of the same question, and our guide on the address a startup uses on accelerator applications covers the forms that come before a raise. Form D is the federal side, and it is a document the SEC itself says generally cannot be withdrawn once filed.

What we did not verify

We could not open the full text of the Investopedia article on September 5, 2026, so it is one of the eight results named above but not one of the seven whose full text we compared. We did not test whether the EDGAR filing system rejects a post office box in Item 2 at the point of entry, and we did not survey what state securities regulators publish from Rule 506 notice filings. We also found no staff interpretation on whether a related person may list a business address in Item 3, on whether a post office box is accepted there, or on whether a mail-only address satisfies Item 2; the readings above rest on the text of the current instruction, on the 2008 release's statement of what Item 2 is for, and on the label the paper Temporary Form D of 2008 used. We did not examine what Form ID requires for the account's business address. Confirm with counsel if your facts are close to a line.