ben hedges: maximize amex referral & sign-up bonuses! gold card, platinum, and tax tips

Click "show more" for ad disclosure Hey credit warriors, welcome to the show and I was browsing some articles on doctor of credit this morning, shout out to those guys, its a great website. I noticed an article on increased Amex referral bonuses and there are also some great Amex sign up bonuses out there too, we will talk about that in a moment. But anyway, in case you don’t know, you can get rewarded in the form of membership rewards points or cashback, for referring a friend to get pretty much any Amex card (except the co-branded platinum cards like the Charles Schwab platinum). Right now card members are reporting referral bonuses of up to 35k points on their gold card accounts. I personally see 30k points in my account. Now it is still limited to 55k points per year, same as before, so if you get the 30 or 35k offer, two referrals and you have maxed it out. But it does mean that the average person, who doesn’t have a social media following can probably get at least one if not two referrals per year and grab 35 to 55k points. If you are in two player mode it is easy, just refer you spouse for a card and they can refer you back. Boom. And you can actually refer people to any card, not just the one you have. So if they want the gold card, great, they get 60k points and I would get 30k, a total of 90k between us that if it was me and mrs credit shifu in two player mode we could pool together anyway for a family trip. But they could also look at other cards. The Amex blue cash preferred, if offering $300 cash back as a welcome bonus, then we have an elevated welcome bonus on the green card 45k points instead of 30k and on the Hilton Honors card, the basic one with no annual fee they are offering 100k points and a $100 statement credit as the welcome bonus. And the Platinum card is still going with its 60k points plus 10x points per dollar on gas spending on $15,000 worth of spend in the first 6 months. An incredible deal! So if you want a new Amex card, now really is a great time to sign up, I’ll put the links to gold and platinum below if you want to know more. And if is obviously also a great time to be referring other people as well. Cardmembers, especially gold card members, should check their accounts to see what offer is showing up. I would recommend you copy the link and save it somewhere. Even if the offer changes in the future, your link may still be valid and get you and the person being referred a higher bonus. Now it is important to check, don’t just send out the link to someone and they get an error message if it really has expired. Open it in your browser and compare it with the current public offer. Now some people also ask me do we get taxed on these rewards? And the answer is yes! This is the only time Amex membership rewards or cash back are taxable, since technically you are doing marketing for american express and you are being paid in MR points or cash in some cases. They will send you out a 1099 form, and they value MR points at 1 cent per point, so if you max out at 55k it is $550 in income reported. I already received a few forms for referrals we did in 2020. Now what I do is when I report these 1099s on a schedule c form, I list the card’s annual fee as a business expense, since if I didn’t have the card, I couldn’t do the referrals so to me it is a legitimate business expense. So for the gold card I would get $550 in reported income if I maxed it out and then I report the $250 annual fee as an expense which leaves me with $300 profit which you would be taxed on. Now this is not tax advise, I am just sharing with you what I do. I ran it past my CPA, she said it was OK, but that is for my personal situation, so you definitely should speak to your tax professional first, but this is just giving you an idea. Alright guys that is the video, don’t forget to check your amex account to see if you have those elevated referrals. Let me know in the comments what you got. Please subscribe if you are new. Links to the gold and platinum below and we will see you next time. Bye. Credit Shifu Wallets: Like Credit Shifu on FACEBOOK: SONG FROM OUTRO Track: Halcyon & Valentina Franco - Runaway (Heuse Remix) [NCS Release] Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds. Watch: youtu.be/5bj44xI2oWw Free Download / Stream: ncs.io/RunawayHeuseRemix NOTE: The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Advertiser Disclosure: This site is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers.