Can a domain name be co-owned?

Me and a friend are building a website together.

At the moment, it's been great just learning but we have a mind that if it got successful enough eventually we would like to monetize it.

We want to get a .com.au domain name but for this, it requires an ABN (australian business number).

The only way to get one is to be a sole trader, partnership or company.

We should rather avoid forming a partnership or a company as we're just starting out and we don't want to have to fill in paperwork like tax returns etc. and plus there's potential legal ramifications (eg. my friend goes ahead and buys an apartment under the partnership)

So is it possible for one or both of us to be a sole trader and then register the site as co-owned by both of us? Even if we can only register as one of us, would it still be considered co-owned if there was some sort of verbal agreement or if we both worked on it in an informal partnership arrangement?

This should be solved by a written contact between you and your partner. Just say in the contract, that all decisions concerning the domain name have to be taken by both and that in case of eventual sale of the domain name the benefit should be equally divided between you and your partner.

You don't need to go the lawyer for this: as far as the two sides (you and your friend) agree and don't expect any significant conflict. Setting up a company for this is an overkill. This solution (written contract between two individuals) is simple and would avoid you the payment of the setup fees and the paperwork that the creation of a company implies.

But first, ask yourself how far do you trust your friend. Sometimes, if the friend is really a good friend, you can skip this kind of questions.

It's good to foreseen all the eventualities but I hope you trust each other enough because launching a startup without mutual trust between the partners is just a way to hell...

Good luck!

The smart way to do this is through setting up a company (you're right, you don't want a partnership). Companies are designed to make it easy for there to be multiple owners for one set of assets.

Forget the verbal agreement. That's just setting yourself up for later fights. You need something in writing. The 'informal' partnership agreement also doesn't work. Either it is or it isn't a partnership ... and in that case you want a corporation. I suppose in theory you could set up a contract between you that says (in other ways) that you co-own something.

One structure that comes to mind is an agreement that lets the person who isn't the registered owner buy the asset from the registered owner, for a certain price, if certain conditions are met. You might have a 'shotgun' price (one person offers a price, the other decides to buy or sell).

And by the time you get that drafted by a lawyer, it's probably faster and easier to just register a company (with suitable vesting ).