Hosting as joint partners

[Erinç1]

Me and my friend jointly own the house and we want to host together by rotating every 3-4 months. We opened a joint bank account that we want to collect income into. A couple of questions:

- Can we have 2 primary hosts or what is the best way? Setting one of us primary and the other one as a cohost and rotate every while?

- Who receives the 1099? How do we notify Airbnb that the house is owned jointly and both partners will receive the income equally?

[Sarah977]

@Erinç1  There are host, co-host possibilities, but the simplest thing would be for you to host under one account, since you're going to be spelling each other off every few months- have a profile with a photo of both of you and both your names. Couples do this, parents and their adult children, there's no reason why a couple of friends can't. 

Then you would both have access to all the same information and be able to message guests from the same account.

Airbnb doesn't have any interest in who owns the homes they list, you don't have to notify them about any of this, and they won't pay a portion of the income on one listing to two separate accounts. 

As far as the taxes are concerned, that's something you and your friend/co-owner would have to work out. I don't know how Airbnb issues the tax papers when the hosting account is joint, but other hosts here probably do.

I would suggest that you have a legal agreement with your house partner regarding your arrangement, that covers how the business will be handled.

Friendships can turn sour if you don't keep business as business, rather than just trusting the other and having verbal agreements because you are friends.

[Inna22]

@Erinç1  From what I recall you should be able to put the account in a name of a corporation and it will receive the tax documents. You can still have your personal names and picture as @Sarah977  suggested. You should incorporate together anyway. Both for the purpose of legalizing your agreement with your friend as per Sarah’s recommendation and for legal purposes- greater protection on an unlikely chance you have a litigious guest.

[Fred13]

Always work backwards - keep it simple. One generic entity, one joint account and everything else is no one's business.