Buy your .tax domain today

A .tax domain suits any practice whose work is filing, planning or representing clients before a revenue authority. That covers solo preparers, bookkeeping firms, enrolled agents, CPA practices, payroll bureaus and advisors who handle one niche such as expat returns or crypto gains.

It also fits the businesses that sit alongside filing. Software for preparers, continuing education providers and referral directories all read clearly on the extension, because the word describes the subject rather than the company.

The common thread is that a visitor knows what you do before reading a single line of your homepage.

No, a .tax domain is open to anyone, and no credential is checked at purchase.

ICANN groups .tax with the financial extensions that have open entry requirements, so the obligations attached to it concern complying with applicable law rather than proving a license. That is a different tier from .cpa, where a valid license is verified before the name is issued and checked again at renewal.

A preparer holding a PTIN and nothing further can register a .tax name legitimately. What the extension does not do is confer a qualification you lack.

A .tax address states what you work on, not what you are licensed to do. The titles carrying legal weight in the US are CPA, licensed by a state board of accountancy, and enrolled agent, licensed by the IRS after a three-part exam.

Anyone paid to prepare federal returns needs a PTIN, and a PTIN requires no professional credential at all. That gap is why the distinction matters more here than on a neutral extension.

Use the domain for the subject and let the site state your credential plainly. Claiming a qualification you do not hold is a problem with your regulator long before it is a problem with the registry.

A .tax registration carries public-interest commitments that an ordinary extension does not. Your registrar has to notify you at signup that you are expected to comply with applicable law, including consumer protection and financial disclosure rules.

There is also an expectation of reasonable security where you handle sensitive financial data, which for most practices means encrypting anything a client sends you.

None of this blocks the purchase. It is closer to a reminder that the extension sits in a regulated sector, and that the rules governing your advertising and your client files apply to the site as much as anywhere else.

Yes, a .tax domain handles email and file transfer exactly as any other extension does. A mailbox such as returns@ or intake@ on your own name is much harder to spoof than a free consumer inbox, which matters in a field where impersonation is common.

The IRS warns every year about preparers who advertise online, take a fee and then refuse to sign the return. An address a client can verify is one of the cheaper ways to look like the opposite of that.

For uploads, keep the transfer encrypted and avoid asking anyone to send a Social Security number as plain text in an email.

Choose .tax when filing and compliance are the work, and .finance when the remit is broader money management. Both are open extensions in the same regulatory tier, so the decision is about meaning rather than access.

A practice doing returns, representation and planning around the tax code reads correctly on .tax. A firm doing wealth management, lending or corporate finance describes itself too narrowly with it.

If you do both, pick the word your clients would use to describe you and point the other name at the same site.

A .tax domain is billed for the full year regardless of when your clients arrive, and for most US practices demand concentrates between January and the April deadline. That is worth planning for rather than discovering in year two.

The usual answer is to give the site something to do in the quiet months. Extended-deadline reminders, quarterly estimates, bookkeeping retainers and year-end planning content all keep the address working between filing seasons.

Set the renewal to automatic before the season starts. Losing the name in October because a card expired is a poor way to begin the next January.

Yes, a .tax name typically renews for considerably more than a .com, and the advertised first year is usually a promotional rate rather than the ongoing one. Check the renewal figure before you commit, not only the headline price.

The gap is normal for a specialist extension with a small registrant base, and it buys an exact-match address that was still available. A practice billing for a single return usually covers the year’s renewal several times over.

If the number does not work for you, the honest alternative is your practice name on a cheaper extension.