Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 09:04PM | Staff How Does a Qualified Intermediary Differ From an Accommodator?
This can be a confusing issue. Different speakers or presenters use different terms. I was attending the Nationwide IRS Tax Forum this week and an Enrolled Agent asked me what the difference was. It's a good question.
You may have heard the terms 1031 exchange Qualified Intermediary, Accommodator, Facilitator, or even Strawman. They mean exactly the same thing. There are no differences except in the name.
Those exchangers that have been around a while use the term 1031 exchange Stawman. It was the name used frequently to refer to the person that held the 1031 exchange funds before the "1031 exchange industry" even existed. The term Strawman was more relevant back them because the entity serving as the Strawman actually acquired legal title to each property involved within the 1031 exchange.
The term went through a transformation as the 1031 exchange industry began to develop and mature. It migrated to Facilitator and then seemed to switch over to Accommodator, which is where is stuck for quite sometime.
The IRS settled the issue with the release of the final Deferred Exchange Regulations in 1991. The IRS used the name Qualified Intermediary. You will still hear all of them today depending on who you are speaking with. The two most common are the Qualified Intermediary and Accommodator. It doesn't really matter since they mean the exact same thing.
