Additional information:
Chances are, the clients who pay you will qualify for, and desire to claim the child care credit on their own tax return. TO do that, they are required to provide the IRS the SSN or EIN of the person or business they paid for the child day care services.
By law, you are required to provide your clients your SSN or EIN so they can claim the child care credit. Failure to do so will result in hefty fines/penalties for you. Now, I can't speak for you. But for me, there is no way on this green earth that I will ever give out my SSN to client's customers. I don't care if they're family. Just not gonna happen. So that's why I have an EIN for my business. As stated by Opus 17 above, you can get the EIN "right now" online. Took me less than 10 minutes to get mine. When you get your EIN *DO NOT LOSE THAT NUMBER*.
At the end of the year when you are finalizing your books and getting things ready for tax reporting, the IRS has a form you can use to provide the required information to your clients. It's IRS Form W-10 and you can print off as many as you need at <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw10.pdf">https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw10.pdf</a>. Then fill one out for each client and provide it to them. Since this form is not sent to the IRS (it's for required client information only) you can also put somewhere on that form the amount the client paid you in 2016, and then provide it to the client no later than Feb 15 during the tax filing season. Wouldn't hurt to keep a copy of each one you issue in your own business financial records either.
