We've been working on an app that incorporates PersonAccounts but we've run into a problem.  It's not possible create packages containing components that reference PersonAccounts.

We took the PersonAccount route because we will have both organizational and individual "customers" and we want their records to be peers for the purposes of reporting and association with opportunities.

Given that we can't package PersonAccount packages we began to wonder why we couldn't just create a new Account record type of "Individual" and create some supporting custom fields (i.e. first name, last name, email, etc...) and then create two page layouts: one tailored to Organizations and one tailored to Individuals.

Clearly SF could have done this too instead of creating the hybrid PersonAccount structure but we're not sure why, although I imagine there's a good reason.  Can anyone explain or offer concrete reasons why we one shouldn't add custom "individual" fields to the account object and have two record types?

Thanks.....