@Nicola3819
As you know, I think it may be simpler to host in your own name. The KYC for an individual is easy. However, there are disadvantages to changing the way you host. Here's my summary, in case it helps a bit.
Hosting in your own name:
You can do this without negative effects on your future operations. Use your own name as host on Airbnb and your personal bank account. Sign a contract between yourself and the trust to the effect that you rent the property from the trust and you pay the Airbnb revenue to the trust. Declare the full Airbnb revenue to SARS on your personal tax form and deduct it again as paid to the trust. You'll have to be a provisional taxpayer, which you may already be, and create the hosting as a business on your tax form (which will make zero profit as revenue equals expenses).
When you pay over the revenue, the trust receives the same revenue and the accounting, property rights, taxes and estate planning in the trust stay the same as always.
Airbnb says it reports payouts to SARS and to the Reserve Bank - this will tie up with what you declared for personal tax. As long as both you and the trust aren't saving any taxes, there's no tax evasion risk. There's no downside for SARS and you're being open and honest about the nature of transactions - you're simply inserting a natural person between Airbnb and the trust to make it easier for Airbnb to verify where its money goes.
You need to keep VAT in mind as well, but (unless the trust has other VAT activities) it's irrelevant until your earnings are more than R1m per year (which it likely is not? I can't see any listings on your profile, so it's hard for me to judge the scope of your business).
Disadvantages of changing from hosting in a trust to hosting in your own name:
Two disadvantages come to mind:
1) Starting to host in your own name now, will probably only help to avoid the KYC issue going forward. The money earned on past bookings when the trust was the host (which is already due to the trust and unpaid) will likely still have to be paid to the trust by Airbnb🙈!
2) As @Frances3408 noted, you stand to lose the track record (reviews and years on Airbnb) that the trust has built up as a host.
Keep in mind, as @Frances3408 has said, that the profile you used to create this post has no listings linked to it, so we can't see any details of your business.
I agree with you that it should be doable to get Airbnb to keep paying into the trust account as it has in the past. And you may have no choice but to jump through the hoops to collect the money already due to the trust.
Whether you decide to keep hosting in the trust, will probably mostly depend on whether you're willing to go through the process every year. Regulations are getting stricter when it comes to KYC - corporates have to look all the way in until they see the natural persons behind the legal entities. Going forward, filing all the paperwork every year may not get easier with a trust.
