Why put a business in the wife’ name only? Is this a tax dodge or something else?

Some of my relatives, “Dick and Jane” (a married couple) own a small business. Manta.com says that “Jane” is the owner and “Dick” is the president.

Last night someone told me about another couple who owns a small business and the business is in the wife’s name.

What gives with this?

But I'm just speculating without knowing how their assets are listed.

http://www.omwbe.wa.gov/

A guy should think hard before putting their main asset in only the wife's name.

We file jointly, so it all ends up in the same place. We've got our own bank accounts for the businesses also but since they are available in one place at the bank's web site, I can move money around however I like electronically. She runs hers and I run mine and there's no real reason for us to be on the paperwork for the other business. Ours are both SPs and it sounds like Dick and Jane are probably an LLC. In their case, it might make sense to handle it that way if Dick has a lot of debt that's just in his name (like college loans), just to protect the company.

What's the point of this? Women shouldn't own a business?

Perhaps I was too optimistic.

I did this with a small consulting company that I owned and ran for nearly 10 years.

1) It protected the company from probate. If anything happened to me, there wouldn't be any complications transferring ownership to her, because she already owned it.

2) My wife is both female and 1/8th Native American. Both facts helped us to land contracts on multiple occasions. Because she was the sole listed owner, there was never any question that we qualified as a "minority owned business". Because I'm about as white as it gets, joint ownership would have cost us jobs.


-and-

3) When one person is both the owner and operating president of a registered corporation, it sets off audit flags in the IRS computer system, because those types of businesses have a higher probability of engaging in fraud. By separating the duties, we reduced our chances of being audited (though it's debatable how effective the tactic is, as we were still audited twice in a decade).


There's nothing shady about it. It's just part of running a business.

Or do you have a "need" to judge?

The simplest explanation is often the best.

It's probably not important.

We certainly don't know. Why ask us?