We are a Florida bank and we have a few clients that are property managers. We obtain a copy of the management company agreement that authorizes our client to handle the financial affairs of the building/condo regarding collection of maintenance fees etc. and we do confirm with the SOS website that the person executing the Management agreement is an officers of the company. Other than that we do not collect any information on the property owners and we have the management company execute all of the related documents such as resolution and TIN certification (we use the TIN of the property). However, we are second guessing ourselves not regarding who should be executing the resolution for the establishment of the account and who should be certifying the TIN in the W-9? What are others doing?

Your customer is the property management company, not the condo association. The only reason you would HAVE to have a W-9 is if the account will pay interest. If that's the case and if you're using the TIN of the condo association as the beneficial owner of the funds, you'd get the certification from a condo association official. The management company provides the documentation authorizing the opening of the account and designating the authorized signer(s).

Thanks John. We like to have a TIN certification for all accounts in the event that there is a tax lien or other similar legal hold. This way when we freeze those funds we have a signature on file and there can't be an issue that we used the wrong TIN. I got a response from another bank in our area that they open these types of accounts under the TIN of the management company. If that management company was ever a subject of a tax levy, then that bank could technically satisfy the lien with funds that are not really belonging to that management company and I think that could be an issue. I appreciate the feedback.

Actually, the handling of garnishments and levies should never be simplified to the point of matching TIN for TIN. The banker must understand the nature of the account. And in this case, the account should be tagged in some way to reflect its fiduciary nature, regardless of which TIN is on file.

We do that by the title of the account. We have had levies for both our management company and their companies and so having the TIN match the true owner makes it much cleaner. We didn't always do it that way and we had a garnishment that racked up some unnecessary legal fees by the attorneys trying to prove who the funds really belonged to. In the end the only losers were us the bank.