What changed — and why it's now your problem
Before the House settlement, NIL income flowed mostly through third parties and collectives. Now schools distribute revenue-share dollars directly, and those payments are reportable. The prevailing practice is to report them on Form 1099, which keeps S-Corp and QBI strategies available to athletes classified as active-service earners — but that treatment is being challenged, and a shift to W-2 would change the math for your entire roster overnight. An institution that can't show a current, documented tax picture for the athletes it pays is carrying a quiet compliance and reputational risk.
What SidelineWealth gives an institution
1099-vs-W-2 classification of revenue share will be litigated. The institution that's best positioned isn't the one with a spreadsheet — it's the one that can produce a documented, source-traced tax position for every athlete it pays. That evidentiary trail, per athlete, is the product. The cap calculator is just the doorway. What is and isn't independently verified is published at /verification.
For every athlete you pay, a dated and source-traced record of the payer-side position — classification, information reporting, multi-state sourcing, and nonresident withholding — generated from one place rather than rebuilt by hand. Individual planning questions (entity choice, personal deductions, retirement) belong to the athlete's own advisors, and the platform routes them there rather than answering them in your name.
1099-vs-W-2 classification of revenue share is contested. When an approved rule change lands, every athlete's plan recomputes — and the system flags exactly who's affected. Your compliance posture isn't a stale spreadsheet.
Institutions get the opposite default from firms: payer-side records carry your program's identity, but anything individualized that reaches an athlete does not go out under your wordmark. Athletes are pointed to their own advisors with the assumptions written out, so the department is documented as the payer — never as the source of personal financial advice.
We stand up your program's workspace and onboard your compliance office, collective, and the advisors who serve your athletes, with a dedicated success manager. SSO and API access are on our enterprise roadmap.
How it works at roster scale
Oversight your compliance staff can stand behind
The rev-share view sits on a firm-grade governance layer: role-based visibility for your staff, four-eyes sign-off, and a record of every decision — each exportable when someone asks to see the file.
Give each team member a professional role — CPA, wealth advisor, relationship manager, legal — and a configurable matrix sets what each role sees in the cockpit. A relationship manager can follow task status without the tax figures in view.
Preparer → reviewer sign-off on every client plan, with the reviewer required to be a different person than the preparer. Re-running a plan after review sends it back to be reviewed again.
An append-only, tamper-resistant trail of the work your team does — task changes, sign-offs, document generation, plan re-runs — filterable by client, person, action, or date.
Assign client tasks to team members and track them to done, and apply your firm's checklist to a client in one click — re-applying never creates duplicates.
One click produces a firm-branded PDF per client — the plan summary, sign-off log, task and filing completion, and the full history — assembled live from current data.
The audit trail, the book-of-business, and your access-policy matrix each export to CSV or print to a firm-branded PDF — the record a partner or reviewer might ask to see.
What the cap costs you as the payer
A quick public read on a $20,500,000 pool: how much of the cap is committed, and what the checks cost once worker classification is applied — a W-2 athlete carries employer FICA that a 1099 athlete does not. Enter amounts only; this runs entirely in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere. This is just the surface. The per-athlete work — an individual, source-traced, law-current position for every athlete you pay — is run by the advisory or CPA firm serving them.
Illustration only — not tax or legal advice. Figures use 2025 (House cap 2025-26) constants and depend on each athlete's full situation. A roster-wide rollout is run by the advisory or CPA firm serving your athletes, not by the department — see below.
Who runs this for your athletesIllustration only — not tax, legal, or compliance advice. Figures are estimates; payer classification, Title IX application, and 1099-vs-W-2 treatment of revenue share are unsettled. Confirm with the institution's tax counsel and compliance office.
International athletes on revenue share are a compliance landmine.
Revenue-share or NIL payments to an F-1/J-1 athlete raise visa work-authorization questions and 1042-S withholding and reporting your department can't afford to get wrong. SidelineWealth triages whether a payment needs immigration counsel before it is made, computes the nonresident position, documents the diligence, and now monitors the federal immigration & visa-policy sources — SEVP, CPT/OPT, J-1 Academic Training — so a rule change that touches your foreign athletes surfaces for review. Per athlete, across your whole roster.
School & collective tax questions
Does paying athletes directly make our school a payer with tax obligations?
Yes. Post-House, a school that pays revenue share directly is a payer with information-reporting, worker-classification, and (for international athletes) tax-withholding obligations on those payments — separate from the athlete's own personal taxes.
Should revenue-share payments be reported on a 1099 or W-2?
The prevailing practice is 1099 (independent contractor), which keeps the athlete's entity and QBI options open. But classification is contested; a shift to W-2 would add employer payroll tax and benefits cost for the school. SidelineWealth models both and flags your exposure.
How does Title IX apply to revenue sharing?
Distributing revenue-share dollars across men's and women's sports raises proportionality questions, and the standard for those dollars is unsettled. We deliberately do not offer a public tool that quantifies your gap: a dated, written estimate of your own shortfall is a record you would rather your counsel commissioned and controlled than one a vendor's webpage generated. Take this one to counsel first.
What are our obligations for international athletes on revenue share?
You generally must withhold U.S. tax at the source — commonly 30% or a reduced treaty rate — and report on Form 1042-S, and you should confirm the athlete's visa work authorization before paying. The platform flags both per athlete.