- [Instructor] Hey there.
The next few minutes, I wanna show you how to fill out
an IRS form called the W-9.
Kind of a strange sounding form,
but really, this is a form that gets used for
all kind of different purposes,
and it's probably going to come up at some point
in the life our your real estate investing business.
Sometimes you're gonna have to fill this out
on behalf of yourself,
and sometimes you're gonna have to request
that somebody else fill out this form for you.
And really the whole purpose of this form is pretty simple.
It's just so that one party can get
the information they need from the other party
in order to file a specific form with IRS.
So for example, whenever a property is being bought or sold
and the closer needs to file a form called the 1099S,
in order to get that information,
they could get it from this form
if it's filled out and signed and dated
by the appropriate party.
Or for example, if you as the seller
on a seller financed deal need to send out
what's called a 1098 form to the borrower,
you could also get that information from this as well.
And those are just two examples,
there's a slew of other reasons why
this form could be helpful,
but really I just want to show you
how to fill this form out,
whether you're filling it out on behalf of yourself
or whether you're filling it out on behalf of somebody else
and you're trying to get their signature.
You really just have to put
all the information that you know right here in this form.
And right now I'm showing you the online version
from the IRS website.
And keep in mind, this form actually changes
and gets updated every so often.
You'll see right here at the top where it says
revised December 2014.
At some point in the future, I guarantee
this is going to be revised again.
So whenever you're filling this out,
just make sure you're working with the current copy,
because there are these little minor changes that happen
every so often,
and really all you have to do is just
enter in all the information you have
about the person from whom this form is being requested.
So for example if this form was being requested from me,
I would just go ahead
and put my information in here like this.
And depending on whether you're filling this out
on behalf of yourself or on behalf of a business entity,
that's when you would fill in this second line here.
So for example, if I was filling this out
on behalf of my business entity,
I would just put my company name here,
and then when you look at this second line right here,
in my case, I have what's called a
single member LLC, which in this form,
the IRS essentially treats the same
as like a sole proprietorship,
if you're just operating on behalf of yourself.
So I would check this box right here.
And once that's done I would go over here,
none of this stuff applies to me,
so I would just leave that blank.
And I would put in my business address here.
And if I'm filling this out on behalf of somebody else,
then I would either leave this part blank
or this section would already be filled out.
And then down here you have to enter in
your tax ID number or your social security number.
In my case, I was actually a little confused
by this at first.
I am filling this out on behalf of my single member LLC,
however according to the instructions
on page three of this form,
which is right down here,
because I'm a single member LLC
and that's considered a disregarded entity,
I'm technically supposed to fill in
my social security number,
not my employer identification number,
even if I have one.
And again, that's according to what it says
right down here,
where it says do no enter the disregarded entity's EIN.
So just keep that in mind
if you are doing this on behalf of your company,
but that company is a single member LLC
acting as a disregarded entity,
in that case, you're not gonna fill out this,
you're gonna fill out this.
Keep in mind, I am not a CPA,
I'm not really an expert in this stuff,
I'm just kind of going by what the instructions say,
so if you have any questions about this,
be sure to run it by your CPA
and or just verify that your information
is put in there correctly.
Don't take this as financial tax advice
or anything like that,
I'm just telling you how I fill out my forms.
And once that's complete, I would just print it out,
and then go down here and I would sign it and date it
and then send it back to the person
who was requesting it from me.
Now alternatively, if I was trying to get this form
completed by somebody else,
because I needed their information
in order to complete some forms on my end,
then I could either send them just a blank copy of this
and say good luck and have them figure it out,
and some people will be able to do that,
some people won't, just because it's an IRS form,
it's confusing by its very nature.
So if you wanted to be nice,
and if you had some of their information already,
you could go ahead and fill out some of that for them.
And for example, you can just go like this.
If I was trying to get it from a guy named John Smith,
I would put his name in here,
and I'm just getting this on behalf of himself personally,
so I leave this section blank,
and I would check that box.
And then down here I would just put his address
and then I would just kind of leave this blank
or I would fill it in later
and then at this point,
if I had his social security number for some reason,
I would fill it in,
but usually the whole reason I'm even asking for this form
to get filled out is because
I don't have their social security number.
So when it comes to this section,
I would basically just leave it blank,
but when I print it out,
and scan it and send it to them,
I'm gonna want to indicate really clearly on here
that they need to fill this out
before they sign it, date it, and send it back to me.
So usually what I would do is I would print it out
and like highlight it or draw a big circle on it
or put an arrow on it, some kind of a sticky note
if I was sending them a hard copy.
Just make it very clear and obvious that,
hey, fill this out before you send it back to me.
And then I would just send it to them
and I would probably indicate as well here
just to make it obvious,
hey, sign this section and date this section.
And that's really all you have to do.
And once you have this completed form
with all the numbers and information
and signatures and dates,
then at that point you will have what you need
in order to complete your 1099 or 1098
or any other document that you may need
in the course of your business.
So that's really all there is to it.
That's what a W9 is and that's how you get it filled out.
It's a pretty straightforward document,
but if you're not accustomed to working with this,
it can obviously be confusing.
You can always feel free to read .
the rest of the directions here,
it's very interesting reading as you can tell.
But I'll just sort of leave that up to you.
And I'm gonna have a link to this form
right beneath this video.
So if you need to get to that,
you should be able to access that online
and keep in mind, if you don't have this information,
that's okay too.
You can just as well leave all this stuff blank.
But if you're gonna do that,
just make it very clear to them
what they need to fill out,
like you can highlight the empty fields
or put arrows next to them,
just so they understand what they're supposed to do,
because the average person
probably is not going to understand this.
So that's all there is to it.
And that's all you gotta do.