The Ultimate Guide to SOT
Well, an SOT is a Special Occupational Taxpayer, that is to say somebody who pays a fee to the ATF for the ability to deal in or manufacture NFA items like silencers. A Class 3 dealer is something of a misnomer, because that term is more made-up than official. But it is in common use and tends to be a shorthand for somebody who deals in (but doesn’t make) NFA items. But we’ll talk about Class 3 stuff in a minute.
For now, let’s start at the beginning and dig deeper into SOT’s, what exactly you can do with them, and how you get them…
As we previously mentioned, an SOT is a Special Occupational Taxpayer. That’s government speak for “somebody who does things we don’t like but everyone else loves, so we are going to tax and license them for it.”
SOT is really a status. That’s why it is technically incorrect to call an SOT a license, or refer to a “Class 3 license”. With an SOT all you are really doing is taking an existing Federal Firearms License, and adding a special occupational class and tax to it – that of somebody who works with NFA items on a commercial level.
