14 year old wanting to set up art account for commission payments

n611

First time posting on a forum so hope i'm in the right place!

My 14 year old is a bit of an entrepreneur and has realised that the Anime artwork they are posting to a digital community is getting attention and people are asking them to produce commissions. They have been trading in the sites digital currency to date but is now thinking about how to monetize this properly and has asked me how they can do this without having to to give any personal name / banking details out. Ideally they would like to set up an account under their artist name, so that the customer could pay directly into it.  I have had a look into setting up an 'artist selling account' for them on Etsy and Redbubble but they are still too young and these companies don't allow parent managed accounts but this wouldn't solve the private commission issue.  

Has anyone done anything like this before? 

Any advice, would be greatly appreciated. 
Thanks 

N

jonesMUFCforever

As he is under 18 most banks will not open a business account for him and he is not old enough for an adult personal current account.
So he is left with a youth account at a high street bank but certainly any cheque payments would have to be in his proper name. If a lot of monies come into the account there is also a possibility that his account could be blocked pending fraud enquiries.

I don't have any experience of digital banks and what they might be able to offer you/him.

born_again

Sounds like a paypal account would be better.

noitsnotme

born_again said:

Sounds like a paypal account would be better.

Minimum age for PayPal is 18.

jonesMUFCforever

born_again said:

Sounds like a paypal account would be better.

Would you not require a bank account to withdraw funds from Paypal?
(I acknowledge that the minimum age for Paypal is 18)

Stuart_W

I did have a friend that accepted Amazon gift card codes online, and you can have a parent authorised Amazon account under 18, so if they are planning on spending the money with Amazon that could work just for now - but useless if they want to build up proper cash earnings, and it would  still be considered as cash for tax purposes, but I am guessing they  well are under that threshold.
Retaining anonymity but accepting cash is likely to hit the money laundering buffers somewhere along the line.

preables

The parent sets up a paypal and links there bank, kids gets them to pay via PayPal then you can withdraw it and give them the moneys 

Malkytheheed

Just setup paypal / account / etc in your name and give him the money via cash / BACS / whatever. Well worth encouraging this. 

noitsnotme

preables said:

The parent sets up a paypal and links there bank, kids gets them to pay via PayPal then you can withdraw it and give them the moneys 

Malkytheheed said:

Just setup paypal / account / etc in your name and give him the money via cash / BACS / whatever. Well worth encouraging this. 

If it’s just a few quid here and there that probably wouldn’t be an issue.  But if the kid is doing really well and there’s a decent amount of money coming in, it could trigger HMRC asking questions about mums/dads additional undeclared income.  HMRC might accept the explanation of who the funds really belong to but it’s an extra potential hassle worth considering.

Also, a personal PayPal account wouldn’t give the anonymity the OP mentions.  Although you only have to provide an email address to get paid, the person sending the money will see the name of the parent who owns the receiving PayPal account.  The only way round this would be a business PayPal account in the name of the business but that introduces further potential issues.

Malkytheheed

HMRC wouldnt for a second make me think twice about doing the right thing by my childs development and education. 

noitsnotme

Malkytheheed said:

HMRC wouldnt for a second make me think twice about doing the right thing by my childs development and education. 

Good for you and I would do the same for my kids.  I just think it’s only fair that the OP is made aware of all possibilities.  I think the lack of anonymity may be a bigger problem for them though.