Why do the rich prefer not to buy assets in their names?

[Issa56]

Just on top of my head, maybe for safety and security reasons. It could also be that the money isn’t clean. You’d see this most commonly with politicians. They buy and own assets under different names because they don’t want the public to know about their wealth.

I agree with you, some people don’t make use of their name when buying assets because they didn’t use clean money in purchasing the assets, some of them believe with time they might be investigated, and maybe some of their assets will be seize, or if they notice that they don’t have much assets they going think they are innocent, so if they don’t register it with their name, they won’t be able to touch those properties because it doesn’t belong to them, but if it’s registered with their name, they will be losing the property.

Some people just do it for privacy sake, they don’t want the public or anyone to know that the property belongs to them, so they just going to register it with the name of someone close to them.

[Tamaperdana]

It's become a trend, although it has existed, the rich folks have a preference of purchasing assets with names other than theirs, they could use their companies, or even a third party brocker.

One would argue it as a way to reduce tax payable, or not to increase the market value of their holding companies.

What could be other reasons?

Yes, one of the obvious reasons is that it can reduce their taxes. If we buy assets in a company name, the taxes won't be as high. But there are also several other reasons why many people don't buy assets in their personal names. For example, they want to keep it confidential for certain reasons. Furthermore, I think this can also avoid legal issues. Because if we buy assets in another company's name, if that company makes a mistake, we won't face any punishment, and our assets will be safe. Because basically, it's only the company that will be punished. So I think that might be the reason why so many people are buying assets under third parties or companies. But I don't know what the other benefits are, but in general, I think it's something like that.

[laijsica]

It's become a trend, although it has existed, the rich folks have a preference of purchasing assets with names other than theirs, they could use their companies, or even a third party brocker.

One would argue it as a way to reduce tax payable, or not to increase the market value of their holding companies.

What could be other reasons?

One of the tricks that wealthy people use to evade taxes is to hire consultants to understate the amount of tax they are required to pay on their total wealth. This is a form of fraud.

One reason why a person does not want to disclose their personal wealth to others is because they do not want to report their real wealth to the government. The government and criminals also monitor wealthy people. To avoid these issues, wealthy people transfer their wealth to other relatives, but the real ownership remains in their hands.

[demonica]

Aside from those mentioned by others which is mainly their reasons are for tax purposes, I think they also do that to distribute evenly or balance their assets within the family members and the company. Like, instead of naming all the properties under me, I can name it under my children so when I die, they don’t have to process all the assets to transfer to different names.

Sometimes they also buy assets or properties under company’s name because they have plans of using it for business purposes. Like for example, a land, they could use it to build new office or warehouse for their operation, or they could rent in out as another source of income.

[X-ray]

It could be for annual gift tax exclusion, for married couples you can gift $38k worth per recipient with gift splitting or it could be for some other reason.

I couldn't think of any other reason besides this annual gift tax exclusion since buying asset in the name of other is still taxable event.

[Chilwell]

Just on top of my head, maybe for safety and security reasons. It could also be that the money isn’t clean. You’d see this most commonly with politicians. They buy and own assets under different names because they don’t want the public to know about their wealth.

Recently I watch a clip on YouTube that explain this better, which make me understand why they are doing that, they main reason why they are behaving like that is to find security for themselves and their business, he also started that using the same name with your business also affect the growth of someone because whenever the business is in trouble definitely you are also in trouble, but when the names are different, it's more safe because it will only affect one out of two.

[Abu-Naim]

It's become a trend, although it has existed, the rich folks have a preference of purchasing assets with names other than theirs, they could use their companies, or even a third party brocker.

One would argue it as a way to reduce tax payable, or not to increase the market value of their holding companies.

What could be other reasons?

Everyone might have their reason for doing that, because some people do it to avoid having their assets slashed as a result of divorce if they had wives especially when they noticed the marriage is failing due to greed or so, they do put their assets in other names to avoid that situation of losing some of their wealth.

While some might be doing that to reduce tax payments just as explained, maybe buying it in another person’s name will not have huge effect on taxes because they might have more than expected already, and adding to their assets will increase their taxes.