SDIRA LLC can it open a brokerage account ?

[Bruce Michaud]

So I'm trying to get a better return on the cash flow from my one rental. It's owned by the LLC that is owned by my SDIRA.

I reached out to a couple of the big names ( ie. scottrade, ameritrade, schwab ). I went thru an application process for ameritrade but they wanted my SSN as the 'authorized agent'. I wanted this account to just be linked to the LLC.

Any thoughts ? Am I being over protective of linking my personal SSN to the SDIRA LLC buisness ?

Thanks, 

Bruce

[Dan Mahoney]

@Bruce Michaud Well, sure, the IRA-owned LLC could open a brokerage account. But why would you go through the complexity and expense of having an SDIRA custodian and an LLC to make conventional stock and bond investments through a broker? You only need this structure to invest in alternative asset classes like real estate and private debt. It would be easier and cleaner to just open a new IRA account with Schwab (or similar) and transfer excess funds/cash flow from your SDIRA custodian to the new IRA. You can have multiple IRA accounts and it is pretty easy to move money between them (as long as you don't commingle Roth with Traditional or rollovers with contributions). As a side benefit, you would improve your asset protection by taking the excess funds out of the LLC since they wouldn't be available to potential future creditors of the LLC.

Regarding the application process, the brokers are subject to "know your customer" regulations so they will need to know identifying information for the human being that is authorized to make decisions on behalf of the entity. Also this protects you so other people can't claim they are authorized to transact on behalf of the LLC. So yes, you are being over protective.