By Adam Cook
Taxes. Woof. We’ve got the first tax day in the new NIL era behind us and I know there were a lot of athletes that felt a little overwhelmed and underprepared for what they had to do around taxes. Figuring out their liability, sorting out how much money they made this year, and what they owed on that money in April, if anything all.
I know without some helpful tools, I’d be lost as well (thank you TurboTax, not a sponsored post 🙂). The bottom line is that much has been said and written about the surprise some athletes will find when they realize they do, in fact owe taxes as a result of their NIL earnings.
Use Your Resources!
The good news is that this isn’t a new problem for college students across the board. Many students in internships earning stipends that don’t have taxes taken out of them at the time of earning have to navigate this every year, which means that often there are good resources in place at universities to help students navigate tax time.
We’ve talked about this before but use the resources available to you as a student, reach out to accounting professors and see if they’d be willing to help you navigate a new space. Often times, university career centers will offer assistance around tax time to students as well.
The most important piece is knowing exactly how much money you earned throughout the year and keeping accessible official records of each amount and from where you got paid.
Solutions to Help
In the NIL marketplaces there are a lot of great solutions for this. INFLCR, Opendorse, and MarketPryce all help you keep track of deals you’ve done and the earnings you’ve made through the year.
The problem comes in when you complete transactions or earn money outside of those marketplaces. That’s where it’s important when you’re looking for NIL deals to ask about how your records will be shared with you and how you can access them throughout the year.
How Campus Ink Helps:
At Campus Ink, we do two things to help make this process easy and and stress-free as possible come tax season.
The first is that as a part of our onboarding process, every athlete will fill out a w-9. That way we’re sure to have all the reporting and payment information to pay athletes out at regular intervals as they earn.
The second is that as a Campus Ink athlete, you’ll have a dashboard with real time access to all of your sales data including earnings. This is a great way to not only watch your earnings throughout the week and learn what social media activities get you the biggest return but it also serves as a living record, accessible whenever you need it of how much you earned throughout the year. Come tax time, this is invaluable as it’s a no-nonsense, easy to find, record of your earnings. No need to worry about combing through paperwork looking for 9 month old pay stubs :).
Most important things to keep in mind:
- Before signing any deals, be sure you know where and how your financial records can be accessed. We’ll always have an easy answer for you at Campus Ink
- Use your university resources like local exchanges, experts on-campus, and student center services.
- Work with local exchange and marketplaces that your university has partnered with to help you keep records and assist in all compliance requirements.