OK, how do I do this?
Say I want to write under an alias, & keep it a secret. I know male romance novelists do this, & apparently female writers in some genres used to in the past. What’s the process for setting up banking & such with a wall of secrecy?
I thought of using an agent to facilitate the ruse, but perhaps that’s the wrong way to go about it.
Form a corporation called ‘Pseudonym, Inc’ and have your bank account opened under that name.
I was considering that.
OK, if I form the “Jack Shilling, Inc.” corporation, which is pretty much me, then are checks made out to “Jack Shilling,” understood by the writer to be a natural person, endorseable by me?
Could I use this to keep my publisher in the dark?
IME, you can write under one name and get paid under another. If you don’t even want your agent to know your gender, the incorporation route would likely be best.
It might be more difficult in a post-9/11 world. The hijackers set up accounts using false SSNs. IIRC, the PATRIOT Act now requires two forms of government-issued ID in order to open a bank account.
You open a checking account “doing business as” [whatever name you like]. It’s the same for an entertainment figure using a stage name (e.g. Madonna, Eminem).
There’s secret and then there’s secret. If you only want pseudonymity at the level of the name on the check, then I suppose incorporation or d/b/a would work.
But I believe that many states require public notice in order to operate d/b/a (e.g. an ad in the local newspaper). And, similarly, incorporation documents are a matter of public record. It wouldn’t take a great deal of effort to break down that wall.
Really, I’m cool with my publisher/editor knowing who the real person is. I just asked about the other hypothetically, because it seems…weird that someone could.
Could one not retain an attorney to act as an intermediary?
Since the publisher must provide a Form 1099 for any payments made to authors, if they pay you direct they must provide your name and your social security number.
Only problem is CEO’s are public record. So you would need to have someone else as ceo/agent of service for the corp…maybe your attorney.
The corp can then pay you quietly since your personal tax records as well as the details of what you were paid by the corp are only between you, the corp, and the IRS. You may have to disclose X amount of payroll publicly but not the individuals paid.
Here’s the brief Wikipedia article on DBA. As it notes, the rules can vary from state to state. Around here, you (a person) can get by with just filling out a form at the bank. Other places involves registering with the state.
You really can’t keep your real identity a secret, it’s comes down to how secret do you want it to be? DBA provides minimal security. As noted, a corporation with you listed as an officer would not be much better (and could be worse).
It does depend on how secret you want it, but one simple way is to open a joint account with your own name and SSN and your pen name. The bank gets a legal SSN, and your can deposit checks made out to your pen name. To make undisclosed payments from the account, use a money order.
You could also just endorse the check in your pen name and just deposit it into your own bank account. If you deposit by mail or in the night deposit, banks rarely reject a check for not being properly endorsed (it technically needs your own signature as endorsement, but any check that had the endorsement of the “Pay to the Order of” name is treated as cash by the bank).
As for 1099. you can give your regular SSN to the publisher as your pen name’s. They don’t check and the IRS won’t care as long as the money is reported to them.
Have you tried this? I haven’t, but opening a joint account with one real person does not allow the other person to be fictitious without a SSN.
I would also be highly skeptical of the second bit of advice without more rigorous citations. This situation will look like identify theft to anyone who actually checks, and I’m not so sure the IRS doesn’t care.
I realize you caveated this, but this step in particular would make it trivial for the payor to find out your real name.
You don’t even have to endorse the check if you deposit it in an ATM.
I don’t see why – the payor would only get your account number on the canceled check. They wouldn’t have any easy way of associating that account number with a real name (without the bank’s cooperation.)
It would have your name signed to it.
Emphasis mine:
Sorry, I missed that. I stand corrected.
In my defense, it’s early still.