If I create an account under the age of 18, and make a bit of money on it, can I then transfer ownership of that account to someone over 18 (like my parents) with the funds still in the count?
I need to know because of tax complications, since I am under 18 I wouldn’t be allowed to withdraw a high amount of money.
Hey, @TopShipper ! Welcome to Shopify Community!
Our Terms of Service don’t permit the use of our platform when an account owner is under 18, so you need to transfer the store ownership to a legal guardian to be able to run the store. You can refer to the guide on this page to set a new account owner. Once a guardian has been set as the account owner, you can stay in the account as a staff member and continue working on the store.
Besides transferring the store ownership, there are additional steps that need to be completed in order to make your store compliant with our Terms of Service, such as transferring the Shopify Payments account ownership to a legal guardian, if the gateway is enabled. Those steps can only be done by our support team, so we’ll need you to create a support ticket by visiting https://bit.ly/3cJkx8V. Please feel free to reach out to the team as soon as possible so you can continue running your store without any interruptions.
While you’re in the process of waiting for your account ownership to get sorted, I thought I’d share a few resources which you can draw inspiration from and that will help you set up your store. Feel free to check them out below.
Don’t hesitate to create a new post if you have other questions!
Thank you for your response, to follow up if my one of my parents created a Shopify account and added me as a staff member would I be able to control everything on the store as if I were an owner. So, my parents would own the account and payments would go through to them but I run and operate the store of the account as a staff member.
If this is possible, how would it affect my parents’ tax band?
Thank you
My pleasure, @TopShipper !
That is certainly possible. You can run the store like an account owner even as a staff member, as long as you have permission to access all the areas in the admin. When your parents create your staff member account, they can set the permissions for you.
Since we’re not in a position to give tax advice, I’m unable to explain how it would affect your parents’ tax band. I suggest reaching out to a tax expert for official and accurate information about this.
Thank you again for another fast response, sorry for asking so many questions but I have a few more, if that’s ok with you?
Say when I turn 18, legal age to own a shopfiy account/store, and for whatever reason my parents don’t want to or can’t withdraw money from the account. Can this account still be transferred to me, with the funds still in it? For me to withdraw it myself.
My other question is, if you are using shopify for dropshipping. How does the process work? If I set up my store and a customer orders a product what happens behind the scenes? How does that order get to my supplier? How does the payment work? Is it all already set up automatically by shopify? Stuff like that.
Thank you
No worries, @TopShipper ! I’m sorry for just getting back to you. I was away for the holidays.
You can certainly have the Shopify Payments account transferred to your name. The current account owner listed on the account must be the one to create a request so your parents may contact us and create a support ticket when you turn 18.
As for dropshipping, I recommend reading our guide, The Ultimate Guide To Dropshipping, to get a full picture of how it works and what you need to do to set up your dropshipping store. There are apps that will automate the order and store management process so it will be relatively easy, but since you’re new to dropshipping it’s best to read everything you need to know from beginning to end as the setup may become overwhelming while you’re still learning the ropes. The guide I shared covers all the basics about starting a dropshipping business and building your store so feel free to refer to it as you set up your website.
If you have questions outside the topic of this post, don’t hesitate to create a new post, and I along with the members of our community will help you out!
Hi Summer,
Can the shopify payments still be transferred over tom someone else with money still in the account? So when the account is transferred from my parents to me, but there’s still money in it, when I withdraw will I be taxed?