Expert: Timmy Chou - 1/14/2012

Question
A tenant of my residential rental property has just requested a W-9 from me.  I file this rental income on schedule E each year.  A tenant has never asked this from me before. Do I need to supply this?  I am very uncomfortable giving my tenants my social security number.

What do I do?

Thanks, Gabe

Answer
Hi Gabe,

The tenant may be trying to write off some of the rent for a business use and seeks to document the taxable entity where the rent is paid.  The IRS will not normally request or see this information except in the course of an audit and most likely the W9 will end up in a file somewhere without any consequence.

If you are really concerned you could apply for a separate tax ID for your rental business.  You can do this online without any consequence to your own tax return.  You would merely reference the number for the rental business portion.  Here is the place to do this:

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98350,00.html

Hopefully this is helpful,

Good luck!