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Ask HN: How do I manage the profit of a successful website?

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21–30 of 143 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do I manage the profit of a successful website?

#22
Apart from saving for your retirement and offspring, I'd suggest finding a good and effective charity in your area, or starting one yourself, for a cause that you can get behind.

Think of how to make your business, house, transportation, etc., more energy efficient and less polluting.

For the rest, get an accountant and/or tax adviser. Or get two or three and compare their initial advice; it looks like you can afford that now.

Re: Ask HN: How do I manage the profit of a successful website?

#23
Congrats on achieving what most of us dream of :-) Being in HN you're bound to receive many different comments ranging from hatred, envy, irony, tax tricks, personal strategies, good hints, helpful tactics and many more. Find a good accountant or tax adviser, usually through recommendations, and discuss your own plan based on your specific needs (age/singe/family/kids/retirement/pivot..).

Re: Ask HN: How do I manage the profit of a successful website?

#27
Are you a solo owner? You need to take an s-corp election and you do not need to pay yourself that type of salary. At most you should pay yourself $54,000 a year.

The reason is money that goes through an s-corp you don’t pay self employment taxes on. Salary you do. That is 15%.

You wouldn’t need to pay yourself more than $54,000 without the government getting upset.

Right now, based on $54,000 a month you are losing about $90,000 a year not being structured like this.

The rest of the money, you can just transfer to your personal account and do whatever you want with. It is all your money as a solo owner, so if you want it just send it to yourself.

I’ve been through this exact situation before and I’m currently a tax strategist and help people with this type of stuff everyday.

When we had all that extra money, I moved to Asepn Colorado and had a bunch of fun skiing and living it up.

You can do whatever you want with the money, but please get your s-corp election set and stop paying yourself $14k a month.

If you want help reach out. I think my email is still in my profile.

Re: Ask HN: How do I manage the profit of a successful website?

#28
post #12

The HN audience, friendly as it is, is probably not your best advisor on these matters. Your accountant or tax adviser should have advised you about this ages ago. Either improve communication with your current accountant or fire him and get a new one able to properly answer this question.

A million times this. Some randoms on a website are the last people you want to take financial advice from, especially when that financial advice could potentially lead to a very hefty tax bill and/or criminal charges.

Re: Ask HN: How do I manage the profit of a successful website?

#30

If you have it as an LLC, any profits will pass through to you through your schedule C, and you will be taxed at regular income tax rates. Your accountant will help. But tax optimization can REALLY matter, and as a small business you have massive opportunities to very legally and ethically optimize your business and tax. Top of mind, what you should really consider is: a) setting up a 401K under the business to shelt…

I don't think the spirit of the question was "how do I avoid paying taxes", but more along the lines of "what the hell do I do with all this money I don't need?".

I would suggest giving it to charity, OP. My mother always said even poor folks should be giving at least 15% of their income to charity, but if you have more than you need, no reason not to increase that number.

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