Aureus Advisory Partners
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The Contract Changes Everything.
The Planning Starts Before You Sign.
A professional contract compresses the biggest financial decisions of an athlete's life into a few months: the signing bonus, state residency, entity structure, and a tax picture that now spans every city on the schedule.
Some of those decisions can never be revisited.
Aureus runs the transition so they are made once, correctly, before the ink dries.
NIL TAX & FINANCIAL ADVISORY
Your athlete's engagement is delivered by a team of advisors, accountants, and credentialed tax professionals, anchored by Enrolled Agent representation.
The Enrolled Agent credential is the highest the IRS awards, federally licensed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, with unlimited authority to represent taxpayers in all 50 states.
The most expensive year to get wrong
The rookie year is unlike any other year in an athlete's financial life. Income multiplies overnight. A signing bonus may arrive before the first game. The team's state, the athlete's home state, and every state on the schedule all want a piece. The agent takes fees, the endorsements keep running through the NIL business, and everyone with an opinion shows up at once.
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The athletes who navigate this well share one trait: their financial structure was decided before the contract, not after. Residency is worth the most before it is established. A signing bonus is structured once. The entity architecture either exists when the money arrives or it does not. This is why our Strategic Advisory engagement includes a pro-transition workstream that activates the moment a professional contract comes into view.
What strategic NIL advisory includes
THE CONTRACT
Signing Bonus Structuring and Modeling
The signing bonus is often the largest single payment of the athlete's life, and how and where it is received drives the tax outcome. We model the scenarios before signing so the family sees the after-tax picture of every option on the table.
BEFORE SIGNING
State Residency
Planning
Residency determines which state taxes the athlete's income for years to come, and it is established by facts and documentation, not intentions. We plan and paper it before the contract, when the decision is still worth the most.
EVERY CITY
Professional
Multi-State Compliance
Professional athletes are taxed by the states and cities where they play, allocated across the schedule. We track, calculate, and file every jurisdiction, the same unlimited multi-state coverage our Strategic athletes already have.
THE STRUCTURE
Entity Architecture
for the Pro Career
The NIL entity that carried the athlete through college may not be the right vehicle for a professional career. We restructure where needed and design second entities for licensing, image rights, and brand activity when the deal flow justifies them.
THE ORBIT
Coordination With
the Agent's Team
Agents, attorneys, investment advisors, and estate planners all arrive with the contract. We run the tax and entity architecture underneath them and coordinate directly with each, so the athlete's team functions as a team.
CONTINUITY
Continued IRS Representation
Professional income draws professional-grade IRS attention. Enrolled Agent representation continues through the transition and beyond, with Power of Attorney already on file from the athlete's college years.
How are rookie contracts and signing bonuses taxed?
The income jump
A rookie contract typically lands the athlete in the highest federal brackets immediately, which means every structural decision, from the entity to the retirement plan to the timing of income, is now operating at maximum stakes.
The signing bonus
How a bonus is taxed depends on the contract's terms, when and where it is paid, and the athlete's residency when it arrives. The differences between those scenarios are measured in six figures on large contracts, and they are decided at signing, not at filing.
The jock tax
States and many cities tax visiting professional athletes on income allocated to the games played there. A full professional schedule can mean returns in a dozen or more jurisdictions, every year, each with its own rules.
More heavily, and in more places, than most families expect. Three forces converge in the rookie year:
Every one of these turns on the specific contract, the league, and the states involved. That is why this work is modeled individually against the actual contract rather than estimated from a chart, and why it starts before the contract is signed.
Every pro engagement is scoped to the contract
We do not sell a packaged pro product, because there is no such thing as a standard professional contract. Every Pro Engagement at Aureus is custom-scoped during the pre-signing planning phase, built around the athlete's contract, league, states, endorsement portfolio, and family situation.
In practice, the transition begins inside the Strategic Advisory engagement, where the pro-transition workstream, the forecasting, and the entity work are already running. By the time the contract arrives, the Pro Engagement is a continuation with a team that already knows every number in the athlete's financial life, not a handoff to strangers during the most important financial year they have ever had.
How strategic NIL advisory works
1
Pre-signing
planning
Inside Strategic Advisory, the pro-transition workstream activates on the first real signal: draft eligibility approaching, an agent retained, or declared pro intent. Residency planning and entity review start here.
2
Contract analysis
and structuring
When terms take shape, we model the signing bonus scenarios, finalize the residency position, and set the entity architecture, coordinating with the agent and the family's attorney throughout.
3
First-year
execution
Every jurisdiction tracked and filed, payroll and entities functioning, estimated payments made, and the endorsement business integrated with the contract income. The hardest tax year of the athlete's life, handled.
4
The ongoing
front office
The engagement continues as the career does: contract years, extensions, new endorsements, and eventually the wealth and estate coordination that professional income demands.
The best time to plan the contract is before it exists
Residency planned after signing is worth a fraction of residency planned before. A bonus structure negotiated into the contract cannot be added at tax time. If your athlete has a professional future in the conversation, the transition has already started, whether anyone is managing it or not.
Frequently asked questions
When should pro-transition planning actually start?
At the first credible signal, which is usually a year or more before the contract: draft projections, agent conversations, or a declared intent to go pro. The highest-value decisions, residency and entity structure chief among them, must be in place before signing. Most of our pro-track athletes are already in Strategic Advisory when the workstream activates.
Our agent has financial people. Why do we need Aureus too?
Different jobs. The agent's team negotiates and manages the deal. We run the tax position, the entities, the multi-jurisdiction filings, and the IRS representation underneath it, and we work for the athlete and the family, not the agency. In practice we coordinate closely with the agent's team, and the athletes best served are the ones whose advisors talk to each other.
What is the jock tax?
The common name for state and city taxes on visiting professional athletes, allocated to income earned from games played in each jurisdiction. It means a professional athlete files returns in many states every year, and it is one of the reasons professional tax compliance is a year-round operation rather than an April event.
Does my athlete need a loan-out or image rights entity when they go pro?
Sometimes, and we will tell you plainly when the answer is no. Second entities can serve real purposes around licensing, image rights, and endorsement activity at professional scale, but they add cost and complexity that only certain deal flow justifies. The architecture follows the contracts, not the other way around.
My athlete is not drafted yet. Is this page premature for us?
The opposite. If a professional future is realistically in the conversation, the decisions on this page are approaching whether they are planned or not. The right move today is usually the Strategic Advisory engagement, where the foundation and the forecasting are built long before the contract, or accounting and tax strategy if the athlete's income is still building toward that level.
What does a Pro Engagement cost?
It is custom-scoped to the contract and quoted during the pre-signing planning phase, before the engagement begins. A rookie deal with one endorsement and a max contract with a licensing portfolio are not the same engagement, and we do not price them as if they were.
Sign the contract with the structure already in place
The professional contract is the moment every earlier decision either pays off or gets exposed.
The athletes who arrive at signing day with residency planned, entities built, and a team that already knows their numbers keep more of the contract, with less chaos, in the most important financial year of their lives.
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That is the entire point of starting early.
This page is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute tax, legal, or investment advice.
Each athlete's situation must be reviewed individually. NIL regulations vary by state and institution and continue to evolve.