Taxes! Everybody hates them and the only thing we hate worse than the taxes themselves are the forms that we must fill out and file. According to Benjamin Franklin: “Certainty? In this world
nothing is certain but death and taxes.”

Affiliate marketers are self-employed business men and women. When you are self-employed that means that you are responsible not only for filing your annual state and federal income taxes but also for making 4 deposits each year prior to filing on April 15th.

If you do not make your quarterly tax deposits, you will get hit with the double whammy of interest and penalties and end up paying more than you would have paid had you just made the tax deposits on time.

There are three things regarding taxes that you really need to do as a self-employed affiliate marketer:

You need to find out what taxes that you are responsible for and where, when and to whom to pay the taxes or make the tax deposits:

This information is readily available free from the IRS and from state, city and county tax assessors/collectors. Ignorance of the law is not a viable excuse. You will be charged the interest and penalties (which are excessive) even if you didn’t know that you owed the taxes.

As a self employed person you will be responsible not only for income tax but also for your self-employment tax. (That’s your Social Security and Medicare payments.)

You need to keep complete financial records:

A bunch of receipts in a shoebox, if you are audited, won’t cut it.  If you are going to keep these records yourself you will need a good record keeping program like Quickbooks. If you aren’t sure that you know what you are doing, there are many bookkeeping services available both online and off.

If you are going to hire someone to keep records for you, make sure it’s a bookkeeper or an accountant who is well versed in internet business tax laws.

Make your tax deposits on time and in full:

I advise that you set up a separate bank account and deposit funds to cover your upcoming tax obligation from each payment that you receive. It’s less painful than making a big deposit all at one time.

We have to pay taxes. There isn’t any way to avoid it if you make money. I guess it’s better to make money and pay taxes than to not make any money and not pay taxes (in my humble opinion).

The tax deadline comes up fast for those of us in the U.S., so make sure you’re properly prepared this year.