Youtube is full of videos telling how important is to open a virtual business address in order to hide your home address from the public records, and file your LLC with the virtual address as your primary address. I followed the recommendation and open virtual address with the real street (not PO box), but now:
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I can’t get business license with the city since they do not accept virtual address
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Banks do not want to open business account on the address, saying they “do not accept C/O address”
I wonder what I might have missed, or why all the hype is about, if all you can do with the virtual address is to file with the state, but not city and not even open a business bank account
The 2 examples you gave have legitimate reasons to not allow the virtual address. Your business license is issued based on your location (home, for example), but you can use a different mailing address (virtual address) for communications and billing. Banks have Know Your Customer laws that require your real address as the business owner, but you can use your virtual address for mailing statements. Pretty much everywhere else, websites, businesses cards, mailing addresses with vendors, etc, you can use your virtual address. Anytime you give out an address, it can be your virtual address.
main motivation declared in those videos is to hide your home address, and bank asks for your “primary business address” being real, not virtual, and your primary business address is one exposed and visible publicly, so I can’t hide it, unless I rent an office
But you generally are not hiding it from the bank, you are hiding it from the public. The bank doesn’t make your address public, putting it on a website, business card, mailings does. I have done both virtual and rented office space and never had any business mail come to my home address. You can still use the virtual address for your mailing address with the bank.
When you open business bank account, for example, Chase business checking account, they ask you to fill in your “primary business address” which they could very well check with what you have in the Secretary of State records. Same can do my city business unit, not sure it’s good idea having totally different addresses in those systems, they all call it “primary business address”, so I bet they mean the same thing, so specifying your home address while having different address on file in Secretary of State is kind of lying