Why do companies not put their real name on checks???
 

ok, i understand why a company like pornbucks may not want to pur their name on the checks they send out to their affiliates

but i have yet to come across a company who puts their real name on a check. companies like platinum bucks, top bucks, cecash, you name it, all of them put their company name on the checks instead of their program name.

why is this?

Because some people might not feel comfortable handing a check to a teller that said "AMERICAN TRANSSEXUALS" on it...

Most of the big players have corporations behind corporations behind holding companies offshore, etc. I've seen companies send checks with a different name every month. A lot of them have to keep swithcing around corp. identities because of merchant account shell games also.

yeah, as i stated, i realize that. i am talking about companies with names that have nothing to do with porn, such as top bucks. why do they not put their names on checks?

i would

KRL, this is what i was thinking as well, but was not sure.
do you think this is the main reason? and if you were starting a company, would you go about it in this fashion?

Thanks funny shit :1orglaugh

I got a 1099 today from a company I didn't recognize and I called them to find out who they are, explaining that I'm a webmaster so they know I'm not some random person calling and the girl on the phone didnt know how to answer me. She had to transfer me to someone else to tell me what sponsor they are. :1orglaugh

Because they might not want the recipients of their non affiliate checks they mail out to realize that Top Bucks is a porn company? How hard would it be to look up the url if you got a check from them and weren't in porn...

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

so wouldnt it be smarter to have a adult and a non adult company at the same time?

Very rarely are the companies that own websites named after the websites themselves... when you incorporate, you tend to choose a mainstream-sounding name, even if your business is porn. The website names are more like trademarks of the company, not the other way around.

okay, maybe some of you people who own adult companies can shed some light on this for me

if you were starting a adult affiliate program, and you had some mainstream ventures as well that you were starting, and you wanted to incorporate at the same time.

how would you go about this, taking into consideration tax issues and other issues such as mainstream folks not liking the fact that your company dealt in porn?

would you make 2 seperate companies, one dealing in porn, and one in mainstream? or would you just make 1 company dealing in both mainstream and adult, and just name your affiliate program something different?

I think it would be best to follow the advice of your attorney and your tax advisor. In keeping it simple, I'd probably do one company and then call my reseller program something entirely different.

Who's going to find out? You know how much hotel chains and the cable/satellite companies make off of porn? Does anyone care?

They don't put their company names on the checks because that's not the company.

Let's use Adult.com as an example. We commonly refer to them as adult.com, but the company name is really ICS. They write their checks out as ICS, because that's the company name.

Koshka, a few reasons here.
One is the affiliate program isn't the company. For example, ICS Inc. is a company and one of the things it does is run an affiliate program called Amateur Money. They run another called Adult Platinum and another called Eraser Cash, etc. All these seperate programs are run by one big company, ICS Inc.

Top Bucks isn't a company. Flash Cash isn't a company name. They're programs run by larger companies.

As for the adult/non-adult company thing, I don't if that's what KK meant. The way I see it, these companies also have to pay for things that aren't porn related (rent, electricity, accountants, computer/office equipment, etc). I think that's what she meant, as opposed to running mainstream and adult at the same time (correct me if i'm wrong, KK)

Basically this is the way our advisors have set us up and instructed us to continue to set up.

#1 Incorporate many reasons to do so.

#2 Do not use a porn name for your main incorporation.

#3 For every domain name you own that you are doing business on incorporate those.

#4 Use corporation #1 as an umbrella company that owns all those.

Why do this?

Well let's say you own 2 very successful sites.

1 is a gay site titled suckingcock.com and the other eatingpussy.com.

They are each owned by their own corporation. suckingcock.com is incorporated under alternative enterprises, llc, and eatingpussy.com is under other alternative enterprises, llc and they are both owned by sexymedia, llc.

Now some asshole in Virginia decides he's offended by your gay suckingcock.com site and he files a complaint with the local prosecutor who decides to file obscenity charges against you.

Now all of a sudden your corporation alternative enterprises, llc is under a legal attack. The judge issues a cease and desist order and orders you to shut your site down.
You wish to appeal or get an injunction, but in the mean time you have to obey the court order.
Or scenario #2 that llc's finances are now caught up in defending some bogus obscenity claim.

Either way your other companies can continue to operate and bring money in and you are not in violation of any court order.

This is just one reason, but in the end it's all about protection.

But as has been advised in this thread seek advice from an attorney and accountant.

For us its simple.. The company name isnt "SilverCash"
If that was the name it would limit what we could do as a corp.

Thats what everyone does that I know. Iits even more so on the Fortune 500 level. Some of the major international corps. have thousands of companies under the corp. umbrella to move things all over the place, liability protection, etc.

some great advice everyone
very much appreciated! :thumbsup

this brings me to my final issue. the plans that we have for our mainstream company(a software company) is quite big, and we are putting alot of capital behind it to make sure it is succefull.

lets say we call this software company "xyz", and we incorporate it. would it be wise to use that same name/corporation as our main company which will own our adult ventures as well? my only concern here is if the mainstream company is succefull, it will associated with porn, if the porn ventures are under this company directly.

i hope this makes sense. hehe