ATF Form 4 — formally ATF Form 5320.4 — is the Application for Tax Paid Transfer and Registration of a Firearm. In plain terms: it is how a suppressor or other NFA item legally becomes yours.
Which form is which
- Form 4 (5320.4) — transfers a registered NFA item to you. Buying a suppressor? This is your form.
- Form 3 (5320.3) — dealer-to-dealer transfer. This is how the item reaches us. It does not involve you and is usually quick.
- Form 1 (5320.1) — making an NFA item rather than buying one.
What a Form 4 needs
- Your details, and whether you are filing as an individual or a trust.
- Fingerprints — an EFT file for an eForms filing, or FD-258 cards in duplicate for paper.
- A photograph.
- The transfer tax — $0 on suppressors, SBRs, SBSs and AOWs since 1 January 2026. Machine guns and destructive devices remain $200.
- Identification of the item: make, model, calibre and serial number.
Individual or trust?
An individual filing is simplest: one person, one set of prints, one photo. That person is the only one who may lawfully possess the item.
A trust can name more than one person able to possess it — useful for a spouse, or for thinking ahead about what happens to the item later. The trade-off is that every responsible person carries their own fingerprint and photo obligation. Four responsible persons means four sets of prints.
Bring everyone in one visit if you go the trust route — additional people are $25 each rather than $50 on separate trips. For the trust document itself, use an attorney.
What happens after you file
The item stays with the dealer. That is federal law, not shop policy — you cannot take it home while the application is pending, no matter how long it takes.
Then you wait. Nobody can promise you a date. Electronic filing is generally faster than paper, but once it is with ATF the timeline is entirely theirs. Any dealer who guarantees a turnaround is guessing.
When it is approved, you come in, finish the paperwork, and take it home.
Official partner
Your Form 4 is filed digitally — start to finish.
We are partnered with 10Scan, the NFA platform that takes the ink cards, the printing and the posting out of the process entirely. There is no paperwork for you to fill in by hand and nothing goes to Washington in an envelope: your application is transmitted to the ATF eForms system electronically before you leave the shop.
- Scan your driver’s licence. Your details import straight off the barcode — nothing to hand-write, nothing for us to mistype onto a federal form.
- Photo taken on the spot. At the station, or scan a QR code and take it on your own phone.
- Fingerprints in about thirty seconds. Three flat captures — left hand, right hand, both thumbs — on an FBI-certified live scanner. No ink, no rolled cards, nothing to smudge.
- ATF questions, validated as you answer them. Each field is checked against ATF specification in real time, so an error is caught at the counter instead of coming back as a rejection weeks later.
- Your eForms account, set up here. If you do not already have one, you create it during the same session — no separate sign-up to go home and wrestle with.
- We review, certify and submit. We check the capture, add the CLEO details, attach your EFT fingerprint file and photo, and file the Form 4 with the ATF electronically.
Sale to submitted eForm usually runs about ten minutes at the counter. Filing as a trust? The trust can be generated in the same session. The prints and photo do have to be taken in person — that part is federal law, not software — but everything after them is digital.
The part people get wrong
Two things, consistently. First, people assume $0 tax means less paperwork — it does not. H.R.1 removed the money, not the process: the Form 4, the fingerprints, the photograph, the background check and the wait are all exactly as they were. Second, if you file on paper, the fingerprint cards must be mailed within ten business days of filing. Miss that and the application can be rejected outright.
Buy the suppressor from HTX Guns and our transfer fee is $0 instead of $85. See what we carry →
NFA transfer
- Transfer (incoming)
- $85
- Bought from HTX Guns
- $0
- Fingerprinting
- $50
- ATF tax stamp
- $0 on suppressors
- Visits needed
- 2