Freelancer Tips: How Much Tax Should I Pay?

When you’re working freelance, calculating how much tax you should be paying can be tricky. We’ve partnered with Crunch, who offer specialist accounting services for freelancers, to help guide you through the maze.

Crunch have two webinars running tomorrow, where their experts will be on-hand to answer your queries, depending on whether you’re working as a sole trader, or you have your own limited company.

What taxes do I pay? A webinar for Sole Traders – REGISTER HERE

What taxes do I pay? A webinar for Limited Company directors – REGISTER HERE

Both webinars are free, so don’t miss your chance to have your questions answered by the experts.

Don’t forget, all ProductionBase members receive a 10% discount on Crunch accountancy packages for the first year, as part of your exclusive range of Member Discounts.

Freelancer Tips: Pay & Tax For Sole Traders

Starting out as a freelancer can be a daunting process, not least from a financial perspective. We’ve partnered with Crunch, who offer specialist accounting services for freelancers, to help guide you through the maze. In this article, we’ll take a quick look at pay and tax for freelancers working as sole traders.

How do I pay myself as a sole trader, and how much should I put aside for tax?
You don’t need us to tell you that everyone loves to get paid. When you’re a sole trader, though, what sounds like a simple concept can get a little tricky.

As far as the law is concerned, there’s no legal difference between you and your business when you become a sole trader. You receive the income and you pay the expenses – including the tax liability, which you pay as an individual. That’s why we always recommend you put some money aside to pay your taxes, as HMRC have very strict deadlines.

So, how much should you be putting aside for tax, and how do you go about getting your hard-earned cash from your business into your pocket? Let’s explore.

Crunch Business Expenses Guide [Free Download]

Knowing what you can claim as a business expense can be tricky. Should you be retaining those lunch receipts and train tickets? And what about your glasses, could they have been claimed as an expense, too?

Discounts For ProductionBase Members

Here at ProductionBase we like to go the extra mile for our members. Members of our community receive exclusive discounts on a range of industry products and services. Check out our latest discounts below.

9 Gifts for Film Lovers

We know it can be a struggle deciding what to buy the film fanatics in your life. That’s why we have done the hard work for you and handpicked 9 great gifts for film lovers.

How To Get Ready For The Self Assessment Deadline

No-one really enjoys filing their Self Assessment. It’s that unwanted chore that you put off until the last minute, before flying into a mad January panic when you realise time’s almost up. Our friends at Crunch, the online accounting specialists, take us through a few hints to help freelancers get through it.

It might not surprise you to know that, historically, Self Assessment deadline day (31st January each year) is an extremely busy day at the offices of HMRC. It also might not come as a surprise that they rake in millions from late-filing penalties every year.

Getting your documents together and filing early are the safest ways to avoid a Self Assessment headache. With that in mind, here are three ways you can get yourself ready for the Self Assessment deadline.

Network Across Rather Than Up

Network. Network. Network.
A word that has been drilled into our heads our entire careers. Here are some tips for anyone starting out in the creative industries.

When it comes to networking; actress, writer, director, and producer of the HBO hit series Insecure, Issa Rae offers a simple but effective solution for aspiring creatives.

“Who’s next to you? Who’s struggling? Who’s in the trenches with you? Who’s just as hungry as you are? Those are the people that you need to build with.”

Issa says she did not see herself being accurately portrayed in mainstream media, so she set out to fill the gap herself. She gained a massive following online through her mini-series The Misadventures of an Awkward Black Girl on YouTube, which garnered almost 20 million views.

A Basic Guide To Editing Software

Software for professional editing: the pros, the cons and where to start from.
There are many alternatives on the market, but just a few are used by professionals and learning all the tricks of the trade takes time and experience. So what are your options?

Avid Media Composer
The undisputed industry standard for feature films and big productions, which is equipped with the most stable platform for the most complex workflows. Plus, with a complete set of tools to make the most of shared storage and multiple operators working on the same project, it is the go-to choice for post-production companies and editing studios dealing with large teams and complicated setups.

6 Pieces Of Advice From Award Winning Directors

No matter what they achieve in their career, every director was once a runner, a film student or a production assistant… So they are often keen on giving advice to young filmmakers. Here are our top picks:

Wes Anderson – Always start with your characters
During the 10th Rome Film Fest in 2015, the director from Houston, Texas, met the audience and, in a Q&A session, he shared several directorial tips like this one:

“For me a movie, the project usually begins almost always with a character or a group of characters. Usually there’s a sort of world… that’s tied in. But, for instance, the last film that I did, The Grand Budapest Hotel, there was a person we were modelling this role, this character who Ralph Fiennes plays in the film. There’s a real inspiration for him, and he was someone my co-writer Hugo Guinness [and I] were close to. In that case, if we put a style to it, it could be a literary style because of the way he talks. We wanted to write the way he talks to create a character in that way. But in that case it’s really the character that comes first.”

7 Tips For Aspiring Screenwriters

Being the dream of plenty of film students, writers and even movie-enthusiasts, becoming a screenwriter can be one of the most competitive and frustrating journeys through the industry. Here are some tips aimed at those who are taking the first steps on this journey.

1. Read plenty of scripts
This should hopefully be obvious, but you can’t learn how to craft a successful screenplay just by yourself. You will need to read a lot of screenplays, from a lot of different screenwriters and across many different genres, from the classics to the latest hits, in order to get a full picture of the different techniques at your disposal, along with examples of good writing that works for the audience as well.

ProductionBase Community

Category: Tips & Tricks