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This is the MOST boring yet profitable thread on STM (11)

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Hey everyone,

What gets measured gets managed.

We live and die by this saying as affiliates...

Finance and taxes are no different...

Yes we carefully track our campaigns’ ROI and profit margins but... you could be bleeding money by accident.

Are you making sure to reserve a % of that for the tax man?

Are you “measuring” your taxes to prevent under or overpaying?

If you’re not keeping track of this you could be living on thin ice. I don’t think I have to explain why... *♂️*♀️

To my understanding if you have a good accountant (& tax lawyer) they can legally lower the amount of taxes you need to pay.

How? They invest your profits in various ways to get you tax credits, advise you how much to pay yourself, and etc.

By the way, I’m not looking to start a political debate here on tax ethics!

So... Are there accountants that understand the affiliate business better than others? Is it worth looking for a specialist or will any accountant do?

I know this 100% depends on the country, but who do you guys use for figuring out your taxes and accounting? Lawyer & accountant?

I’m based in the USA (California) so ideally trying to find someone here who understands what we do well.

Really excited to hear what you all are doing!

P.S. I’m not interested in doing it myself (and yes I have QuickBooks...)


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I'm using a "standard" accountant, she does a solid job on keeping me in line with whatever the tax people require... but she's not really that helpful when it comes to helping me save on taxes, that's true.

For this, there are some "tax advisors" that I consult from time to time, when I need something sorted.

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I've done the same thing for about 5 years now (first for real estate oriented businesses I owned/own and now for IM)... super basic... just have an accounting firm with what I guess you would call a 'Mid-Level' accounting person (not a CPA but knowledgeable) as my go-to person, where they do the tax prep and meet with me a couple times a year to keep things on track, and I do the bookkeeping.

I think the bookkeeping is the biggest variable.

I tried outsourcing it to the accounting folks which definitely was not worth the money in my case, so quit that, then tried Quickbooks on my own, which I didn't like, and finally settled on good old Excel.

Each LLC has its own Excel file and I update them once a month, transcribing and labeling every single transaction. This works for the long-term record keeping aspect of it, for providing a document my tax folks can use at the end of the year to calculate everything, and also forces me to look at every dollar spent, which is extremely helpful.

As far as actually lowering tax liability, I'm only really just now starting to worry about that, but mostly I've been brainstorming with the accounting gal about the usual strategies (LLC taxed as S-Corp, etc), and also educating myself on the subject.

There's a great book in the Rich Dad series called Tax Free Wealth that I like, by Tom Wheelright.

I also follow Sovereignman.com and some other sites that are all about the relocating overseas/second passport stuff, and am aware that's some pretty amazing stuff you can do in that capacity, however I really like living in my little corner of the US at the moment so not really looking into anything like that right now (although as I (hopefully) make more and more money I'll definitely be exploring more and more serious ways of lowering overall tax liability).

Anyway just throwing my experiences out there for interest sake- definitely not an expert on the subject by any means.

PS I would also recommend against creating your own LLC- I've done both and I think its always worth the money to just have a lawyer do it right the first time. There's also a lot of cool stuff you can do with 'Nominee service' and other privacy-protections if the LLC is going for something like long-term real estate investing that can benefit from added privacy/security.

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I am very interested in this is well. I know some bigger affiliates work with CPA's that are familiar with the space, but I have no idea who those people are

My only tip, if it applies to you, is to ask a wealth manager (Fidelity, AXA, Vanguard, etc.) who they recommend for taxes. Whoever they recommend will usually have a lot of experience across many fields dealing with larger amounts of money.

Second tip, if you're at that level, is to find an ex-employee from the IRS. They know every single loophole and can help you save a ton.

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Guys this is seriously some next level info. Thanks so much everyone for the input!
@jack_l
Re: “tax free wealth” yep that’s the book that got me started thinking about this topic!

Hiring an ex-irs employee is reaaally clever.


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Lol yep, Wheelright's the man fantastic book..

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If you need tax advice from people that understand affiliate marketing, hit up Digitas Finance.

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I can´t really say anything about getting just an accountant vs having a lawyer because I only have an accountant and have no experience with a tax lawyer for additional avice.

But in the end it doesn´t matter which option you chose, what really matters first is that you take your taxes serious at all.

Unluckily I can speak from own experience there.

I was a bit lax with my taxes years ago and then one day I had a "friendly" visit from the tax investigation in my house as well as my office.

The following months were pretty exhausting because I didn´t even know exactly about the sum they investigated.

In the end the whole fun costed me about €25k.

That was a hard earned lesson, since then I am doing my best to avoid that such situation happens again.

So again, the first thing is to have a good accountant at all, often they can also help at least a bit with tips how to save some money.

In my opinion a lawyer or so only makes sense when you earn enough.

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Yep this is exactly why I’m bringing light to the subject. It doesn’t seem like anyone else is talking about it.

Thanks for the recommendation about digitas finance. It looks really promising.


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Move to puerto rico like a lot of us and only pay 4%, problem solved

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Ya also not a bad option

until it’s hurricane season 🤣


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