Don’t expect liability protection just because your name isn’t on the registration. A corporation may help at tax time—but only if handled correctly.

By Rick Durden

Prospective aircraft buyers must decide how to structure the ownership of the airplane. For an individual, the options are to put it in the owner’s name or to form a corporation to own the airplane. with the individual as the sole shareholder. (An L.L.C. is so nearly identical that we’ll use the word corporation to cover both.)

If there is to be more than one owner, the aircraft may be owned as a partnership, with each owner’s name showing on the registration, a limited partnership (so rare in general aviation that we’ll ignore it here) or as an asset of a corporation with the owners being shareholders. …