I was laid off from a media buying company in Sep and I have a few weeks left of unemployment benefits (New Jersey, US) but I am owed some money by a couple affiliate networks. It's only a couple grand, but I'm wondering if I can accept the payment from the networks without screwing up my unemployment. If not I'll just wait a few weeks til the benefits run out to accept the payments. Anybody know if you can collect benefits while also running campaigns?
I'm not familiar with the US setup, but Im pretty sure this will be the same in any western style economy - you cannot run a business and still take unemployment benefits - no matter how high your profits are. Its one or the other. You could definitely qualify for some kind of startup support thou, so I would look into that.
The logical solution for you would be to do this in someone else's name - wife, sister ... someone you can trust. And once you are confident about what you are doing, you can use your own name.
Considering the amoutn you mentioned, I don't think you are at large risk, but I'd stop it now and take measures to have your ass covered.
Depends, seek advice, usually the IRD or equivalent is pretty helpful with information on these sorts of things.
If it were me, I would just ring their support and ask - you can generally get information without formally identifying yourself so its not like you're stepping into a trap. I would not talk to the unemployment office in this case, go to the office first that is less likely to make a fuss or has a bad reputation for being a pain to deal with (or frankly might not know the company/personal taxation obligations/laws as well).
If you are running as a sole trader things will be more awkward. If you are running this as a separate business - e.g. it's own standalone LLC, I see no problem with the revneue question, since your personal tax obligations as a beneficial owner could be readily based on the dividends or salary the company pays you.
For all I know though, the US could be illogical and strict about this situation.
With many benefits - and this depends on the country - there are adjustments based on earnings. This might be based on some standard/legal minimum liveable wage/salary. So for example, if the minimum liveable wage is $300 a week, that's what they give you. If you earn an extra $100 a week with some part-time work, they might remove $100 from the benefit, or remove 0.5x that, or something like that.
In New Zealand if on a student allowance as an example, you can earn up to around $150 NZD a week and then for every $1 over that, they remove this from your allowance (which is a bit silly as it makes the extra work in a certain range become of zero value to you, personally). At least that is what I recall. A similar situation happens with the unemployment benefit - you don't get a part-time job earning $100/week and suddenly lose all of the unemployment benefit.
So, seek counsel for your specific country. But I would highly recommend you run a business as a legal entity in this situation and don't run it as a sole trader, as you then get into awkward territory and all the profit gets processed personally. At the ver least if you do this and things take off, most countries IRD-like entities can just evaluate retrospectively and make you pay back any benefits you received that you shouldn't have. The key is to understand exactly how this eligibility works.
I'd also pause your campaigns until that network pays you.