The tax thing nobody warns digital-product sellers about
When my first 1099-K landed, I owed almost double what I'd set aside. Not because I'd done anything wrong — because as a digital-product seller you get hit by three things at once that don't apply to the average freelancer:
1. Your 1099-K shows GROSS, not net. Whop / Stripe / payment-processor fees come off the top — but the IRS sees the gross number. Fees are fully deductible, but you have to actually file them. Most first-year sellers don't, and overpay by 8–12% of revenue right there.
2. Sales tax + VAT on digital goods is a landmine. EU / UK have a Place-of-Supply VAT directive for digital products. Several US states tax templates / SaaS / courses, others don't. If you sold internationally and didn't think about it, you may have collected tax you owe — or owe tax you didn't collect. Either way it's a six-figure-revenue-blocker if you ignore it.
3. The deductions list for digital sellers is bigger than most CPAs realise. Home studio square footage, camera + mic + lighting, Adobe / Canva / ConvertKit / AI subs, the $497 course you bought to learn how to launch, the conference ticket, even the books you bought to write your guide. I wrote down 41 categories that actually apply to digital sellers. Most people claim 8–12.
4. SEP-IRA / Solo 401(k) is the big lever still open in March. You can contribute for last year, deduct it from last year's tax bill, and the window doesn't close until you file. If you had a profitable year and never set one up, this single move usually saves you more than the cost of any guide on the topic by an order of magnitude.
5. QBI (Qualified Business Income) deduction. 20% off the top of qualifying business income for sole props — most digital sellers qualify. Ask your CPA specifically by name; it gets missed otherwise.
I wrote the full Q4-catch-up version of this — the 14-day plan, the deduction checklist specific to digital sellers, the SEP-IRA / Solo 401(k) decision tree, and the exact questions to bring to your CPA on call one — into a PDF. Sells for $97 on Whop, but selling it here for $47. Disclosure: I'm the creator, not pretending to be a random recommender.
The five bullets above are the gist. If those moves alone save you a chunk, ignore the link — that's the point of the post. If you want it pre-walked and don't want to assemble it yourself: https://whop.com/checkout/plan_xahM6e4YbD9gp
Drop your hardest digital-seller tax question in the comments — happy to dig into specifics (US 1099-K, UK / EU VAT, sales tax nexus, S-corp election timing, all of it).