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New rules clarify self employed status of many actors and performers
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IR35 guidance updated for actors and performers

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Ceri Stoner explains how HMRC’s IR35 guidance update will help actors and other performers and offers a positive review for HMRC’s collaboration with stakeholders.

29th Sep 2020
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HMRC recently published an updated version of guidance in its employment status manual for actors and other performers (ESM4121 –ESM4126). This follows months of discussions with key industry stakeholders, including Equity, the trade union for actors, performers, singers, models, directors, designers, choreographers, stage managers, and other creative practitioners in the UK.

In a world where little seems certain and the odds can appear stacked steeply against those in the creative industries, the new guidance, informed by industry input, provides greater clarity in respect of the tax status for performers, and should be of significant benefit.

Setting the scene

As many people know, the off-payroll working rules, commonly known as IR35, are changing again from April 2021. The objective of this move, which follows similar measures for public sector organisations, is to ensure that individuals who work like employees pay broadly the same tax as employees, regardless of the structure through which they provide their services,

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Replies (5)

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By johnjenkins
30th Sep 2020 12:05

Seeing is believing.

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the sea otter
By memyself-eye
30th Sep 2020 13:22

substitution now 'non determinative'.....
Control distinction between content and performance!
So: if I speak to a client thus; "Seems to be a profit? - nay madam I know not 'seems' "
I'm outside IR35. Good oh!

(with apologies to Hamlet).

Thanks (1)
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By jonharris999
30th Sep 2020 14:16

Confusion about the employment status of performers and technicians in these industries has been all-pervasive for at least 30 years. Although these revisions are long overdue, it is to be hoped that they will now bring more clarity.

The way that the SEISS rules have impacted these groups specifically, with freelance engagements incorrectly allocated as employment in a number of cases for different reasons, has provided a recent and particularly painful example of why years of getting this wrong has made life unnecessarily difficult for taxpayers in these industries.

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Anthony Constantinou
By anthonyconstantinou
05th Oct 2020 11:50

Great. Anthony Constantinou CEO CWM FX like it

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By EnglishRose
07th Oct 2020 21:35

Same with lecturing I did as an add on to my other sole trader work - no substitute allowed as they were paying for me and no one else but clearly I was always self employed and I was not doing it day in day out at a university kind of thing either so it was just like being hired as a one off for a one person acting show. Interestingly for one course provider HMRC told them if anyone spoke for them more than 4 or 5 times a year they wanted tax or NI taken off at source. I did 3 days a year so was not caught by that.

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