How to Complete Virginia Form R-3: Business Changes, Closures, and Filing

Virginia Form R-3 is the paper form you send to the Virginia Department of Taxation to change an existing business registration: address, phone, legal or trading-as name, responsible parties, or the closure of a tax account or the whole business. Submit it by mail or fax; there is no fee. Most of these changes can also be made through Virginia Tax’s Online Services for Businesses, but a legal name change or trading-as name change has to go on paper through Form R-3.¹

When To Use Form R-3

The form covers four kinds of changes to an existing registration:

Business profile updates — phone number, physical location, or mailing address.
Name changes — legal business name or trading-as (DBA) name.
Tax account closures — ending liability for a specific tax type (sales tax, withholding, and so on) or closing a specific business location.
Full business closure — closing the business entirely, which ends all tax accounts and locations at once.

It also has a section for adding, removing, or updating responsible party information for corporate and pass-through entities.

What Form R-3 does not do: register a new tax account or add a new business location. Those need Form R-1, the Business Registration Application.² An R-3 sent in for a new location will be rejected.

When You Can Skip the Paper

Virginia Tax’s Online Services for Businesses portal handles most of the same tasks: address updates, contact changes, responsible officer updates, closing a location, and registering for additional taxes.³ The one thing you cannot do online is change your legal business name or trading-as name. That change has to go through Form R-3.¹

What To Have Ready Before You Start

Pull these together before you open the form:

Your Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN).
Your Virginia Tax account number. The format is a two-digit tax-type code, your nine-digit FEIN, the letter “F,” and a three-digit location code. A sales tax account looks like 10-123456789F-001.⁴
Your current legal business name exactly as it appears on your existing registration.
Your current physical and mailing addresses, so the department can match its records.

Changing a legal name? Have the new name exactly as it was registered with the Virginia State Corporation Commission. Updating responsible parties? Have each person’s Social Security number, title, personal phone number, and residence address in front of you.⁵

Section I: Business-Level Changes

Section I is for changes that affect the whole business rather than one tax account. Fill only the lines where something is changing and leave the rest blank.⁶

The main fields:

Legal business name change — enter the new full legal name as registered with the State Corporation Commission.
Trading-as name change — enter the new DBA if it differs from the legal name.
Physical address change — the complete new street address for the primary location.
Mailing address change — use this when your mail address differs from the physical location.
Contact information — updated phone number and contact person.

A full business closure also goes in Section I. Enter the final date of business activity and check the closure option. When you close the whole business here, do not repeat the closure in Section II for each tax type. The full closure covers them all.⁵

Section II: Tax Account and Location Closures

Use Section II when the business itself stays open but a specific tax account or location is ending. Common example: closing your withholding account because you no longer have employees, while your sales tax account keeps going.⁶

For each account you’re closing, provide the tax account name, the account number, the reason for closure, and the final date of liability. Get that final date right. It tells Virginia Tax when to stop expecting returns from you for that tax type, and if it doesn’t line up with your final return, delinquency notices can arrive after you thought the account was shut.

Section III: Responsible Parties

Section III is only for corporate and pass-through entities. Use it to add a responsible party, remove one, or update the information on an existing one.⁵ For each person the form asks for:

Full name and Social Security number.
Title and relationship to the business.
Relationship date — when the person took on or left the role.
Personal phone number and residence mailing address.

Sole proprietors and general partnerships skip this section entirely.

How To Submit

Two options, both listed on the form itself:

Fax: (804) 367-2603
Mail: Virginia Department of Taxation, P.O. Box 1114, Richmond, VA 23218-1114

Fax is faster and gives you a transmission confirmation page as proof of delivery.⁵ If you mail it, USPS Certified Mail with a return receipt gives you a dated record of mailing and delivery, which helps if there’s ever a dispute about whether you reported a change on time.⁷ Keep the receipt yourself; the Postal Service doesn’t retain copies.

There is no fee to file Form R-3.

After You File

No published source gives a specific processing time for Form R-3. Log in to Online Services for Businesses to see whether your changes have posted to your account profile. If nothing has changed after several weeks, call Virginia Tax’s business line at (804) 367-8037.⁸

Closing a tax account doesn’t cancel any returns you still owe. Outstanding returns for periods before the closure date still have to be filed, and skipping them will generate delinquency notices even after the account shows closed.

Other Agencies You May Need To Update

Form R-3 updates only your Virginia Tax records. Depending on what you changed, two other agencies may need to hear from you.

Virginia State Corporation Commission

If your business is an LLC, corporation, or other SCC-registered entity, a legal name change must be filed with the SCC first, before you file the R-3 with Virginia Tax. A Virginia LLC uses Form LLC1014N (Articles of Amendment), which costs $25 and can be filed online through the SCC’s Clerk’s Information System.⁹ The new name has to be distinguishable from other names on record with the Commission.¹⁰

Internal Revenue Service

For an address change, file IRS Form 8822-B. It’s optional, but not filing it means you can miss IRS notices while penalties and interest keep running.¹¹ Processing typically takes four to six weeks.

For a responsible party change, Form 8822-B is required. Any entity with an EIN must report a responsible party change within 60 days.¹² If you don’t get a confirmation letter within 60 days of filing, send a second copy marked “Second Request.”

For a legal name change, the IRS has its own process. If you haven’t filed the current year’s return yet, check the Name Change box on the return itself: Form 1120 for corporations, 1120-S for S corporations, 1065 for partnerships. If you’ve already filed, mail a signed written notice to the IRS address where you sent the return, including the old name, new name, EIN, and effective date. A name change on its own doesn’t require a new EIN.

If you closed the business on Form R-3, you also owe a final federal return for the closing year. Completing the state side without the federal side leaves a mismatch that can prompt IRS follow-up.¹³

1
Virginia Tax. How to Report Changes to Your Business
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Virginia Department of Taxation. Form R-1 Virginia Department of Taxation Business Registration Form
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Virginia Tax. Online Services for Businesses FAQs
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Virginia Tax. Web Upload Tax FAQs
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Virginia Department of Taxation. Virginia Form R-3 – Change to a Registered Business and/or Tax Account
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Virginia Department of Taxation. Virginia Form R-3 Registration Information Change Request
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USPS. Mail Your Tax Return with USPS
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Virginia Tax. Contact Us
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State Corporation Commission. Virginia Limited Liability Companies
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State Corporation Commission. Articles of Amendment Changing the Name of a Virginia Limited Liability Company by the Members
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Internal Revenue Service. Form 8822-B Change of Address or Responsible Party – Business
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Internal Revenue Service. Responsible Parties and Nominees
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Internal Revenue Service. Closing a Business