Allow Affiliates (and Partners) to gift subs from the earnings they have not claimed yet
As an Affiliate, it seems rather odd to me that if an Affiliate wanted to gift a sub to their own channel (e.g. prize or just a kind act), that they can't do it from their earnings. Instead, they'd have to claim their earnings, have the fees and taxes applied to it, then turn around and send the money back to Twitch (more taxes) just to gift a sub to someone in their community.
The money is already with Twitch. Why not allow an Affiliate to deduct from their earnings without all of the fees and taxes to gift a sub, as if it were an expense to their earnings? This way, Affiliates can return some of the earnings they've received back to their community with less fees and taxes cutting that down, meaning more of their community members can be rewarded/thanked for what would effectively be the same amount of "earnings".
Not only does this save money on Affiliates trying to give back to their community, but it's literally free revenue for Twitch. If this were to be the case, more Affiliates would be gifting subs to their community using their own revenue, and each additional sub is more revenue for Twitch. To me, I don't see why Twitch wouldn't do this.
To give an example, if Affiliates were able to gift a sub to their own channel by deducting, say, $3 from their earnings (without receiving any other revenue from this), then each time an Affiliate does this, Twitch saves $3 from payments they would have had to make to the affiliate. The money is sitting right there for all affiliates, so it's easy to just gift the sub to their community, meaning the more it's done, the more money Twitch doesn't have to pay their Affiliates, and the more money Twitch gets.