# BRD-014 — An acquired business registers the details it filed taxes under

> Where the business has been acquired, the brand must carry the company information used for tax reporting at the time — not the acquirer's.

- **Rule ID:** BRD-014
- **Layer:** Brand (`BRAND`)
- **Checks:** `brand.company_name + brand.ein`
- **Severity:** HIGH — Rejected by at least one carrier or provider, and a common cause of failure at the rest.
- **When it bites:** Gates approval — get this wrong and registration is refused
- **How it is detected:** Human check — only someone holding the document can settle it
- **Fix type:** Supply evidence only you hold
- **Required by:** HighLevel
- **Applies:** Applies to every 10DLC registration.
- **Canonical URL:** https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/brand/brd-014/

## Why this rule exists

After an acquisition the operating business keeps trading under its own name while its paperwork moves to the parent, and whoever fills in the registration reaches for the current org chart. Vetting looks up the EIN that actually filed, so the parent's name against the subsidiary's EIN — or the reverse — verifies as a mismatch. It is one of the few brand failures where both names are genuinely the company.

## How to fix it

Establish which entity filed the most recent federal return for this business and register that name and that EIN together. If the acquisition consolidated the tax filing under the parent, register the parent; if the subsidiary still files separately, register the subsidiary. Done when the name and the EIN come from the same return.

## Example of a compliant value

```text
company_name: Acme Coffee Co, LLC with EIN 12-3456789 — the entity that filed, even where the parent now owns it
```

## Check this yourself

**Which entity filed the most recent federal tax return for this business — and are the name and the EIN on this brand both taken from that return?**

1. Ask the finance team, not the org chart: after an acquisition the operating business keeps trading under its own name while the filing may have moved to the parent.
2. Take the legal name and the EIN from the same return. Never one from each side of the deal.

*What wrong looks like:* The parent's name against the subsidiary's EIN. Both are genuinely the company, and the lookup returns a mismatch that reads like a typo.

## Notes

Off-platform: nothing on the form says an acquisition happened. The user has to answer this themselves by asking their finance team which entity filed the last federal return, and then take BOTH the name and the EIN from that return rather than mixing one from each side of the deal.