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I am a blogger and I routinely negotiate advertisements for my fellow bloggers. Sometimes I do it and don't get any payment and other times I get a finder's fee or something.

Most of the time, the advertisers send me all the money and I give it out to the 3 or 4 bloggers that are involved in that campaign. They pay by paypal.

Do I have to pay taxes on the money that hits my paypal account, regardless if I keep any of it (or if it's intended for me)?

On a similar note, if someone gave me cash to hand to someone else, would I have to pay taxes on that? I think not.

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    You ought to specify which country you're in.
    – poolie
    Commented Dec 3, 2010 at 1:02

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If the money comes to you, then it's income. If the money goes out from you, it's an expense. You get to handle the appropriate tax documentation for those business transactions.

You may also have the pleasure of filing 1099-MISC forms for all of your blogging buddies if you've paid them more than $600. (Not 100% sure on this one.)

I was in a blog network that had some advertising deals, and we tried to keep the payments separate because it was cleaner that way.

If I were you, I'd always charge a finder's fee because it is extra work for you to do what you're doing.

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If thinking about it like a business you normally only pay taxes on Net income, not gross. So Gross being all the money that comes in. People giving you cash, checks, whatever get deposited into your account. You then pay that out to other people for services, advertisement. At the end of the day what is left would be your 'profit' and you would be expected to pay income tax on that.

If you are just an individual and don't have an LLC set up or any business structure you would usually just have an extra page to fill out on your taxes with this info. I think it's a schedule C but not 100%

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