The Account Owner and Account model includes demographic information (e.g., name, address, TIN, etc.) for the end customer/recipient. A platform may allow a single end customer to create multiple accounts (i.e. John Smith, the Account Owner opens both a checking Account and a savings Account). To accommodate this use case, the Taxbit data model allows a single Account Owner (i.e. end customer) to have one or more Accounts. To utilize this structure, there must be a unique ID for the end customer (Account Owner ID) and a unique ID for each account the end customer has. This ensures the demographic information is consistent across all of an Account Owner’s Accounts.
In addition to allowing multiple Accounts for a given Account Owner, we also allow secondary Account Owners on Accounts (i.e. joint account holders).
The structure will ultimately depend on the details of the end customer and the data available. Consider an end customer that opens two separate accounts, one as an individual and another as a trust (entity). In this instance, a single Account Owner designation for both accounts is not suitable. Two Account Owners should be created.
See below for a diagram and various examples for how the data may be structured –
Example 1: Account Owner has 3 separate accounts
| Account Owner ID | Account ID |
| account_owner_1 | account_1 |
| account_2 | |
| account_3 |
If a platform cannot support multiple accounts for one end customer or fails to recognize when an end customer has several accounts, Taxbit recommends establishing individual Account Owners for each Account. This means each Account linked to an end customer will be treated as separate with its own unique Account Owner.
Example 2: 3 separate Account Owners, each with a single Account
| Account Owner ID | Account ID |
| account_owner_1 | account_1 |
| account_owner_2 | account_2 |
| account_owner_3 | account_3 |
Please be aware that if your internal system uses a single ID for each End Customer, this ID can be utilized for both the Account Owner ID and the Account ID. Additionally, if the Account Owner ID field is left blank, the Taxbit system will automatically fill in the Account Owner ID field using the provided Account ID.
Example 3: 3 separate Account Owners, each with a single Account, where the same ID is shared across both fields
| Account Owner ID | Account ID |
| id_1 | id_1 |
| id_2 | id_2 |
| id_3 | id_3 |