Knowledge Base and FAQ

Subscriptions The Biggest Coding Mistake Musicians Make in Xero Hello, I’m Louise from Performance Accountancy. If you are a musician using Xero, there is one mistake I see over and over again. It looks harmless, but it can create problems later. The mistake is coding everything as subscriptions. I understand why this happens. You pay for something monthly, it feels like a subscription, so you put it in subscriptions. But that is not how HMRC looks at it. The category should reflect what the cost is for, not simply how you pay for it. Your Musicians’ Union membership is a subscription. That is a proper professional subscription. But Google Workspace is software. Dropbox is software. Your website hosting is marketing. Spotify Premium may be research and professional development if you are using it for repertoire, learning or […] (Read More)

What to do if you were self-employed years ago, stopped, and then start again If you were self-employed in the past, stopped for a number of years, and later start working for yourself again, there are a few important steps that must be followed — even if you already have a UTR (Unique Taxpayer Reference). […] (Read More)

Last Updated: November 2025 Understanding Royalties for Musicians and Performers As a performer, singer, or musician, you may receive royalty income from organisations such as PPL, PRS, or directly from licensing agreements. Understanding how these are treated for tax and VAT purposes is important to stay compliant. What Are Royalties? Royalties are payments made to […] (Read More)

If you’ve decided to stop freelancing and move into a PAYE role with an opera house, orchestra, or theatre company — congratulations, fewer tax headaches! But before you pop the champagne, there are a couple of things to tidy up with HMRC. Stopping Self-Employment: What Musicians, Opera Singers & Others Need to Do 1. Tell […] (Read More)

Default cash basis accounting from tax year 2024-2025   The first thing that needs to change for tax return ’24-25 is that HMRC are assuming everybody is on the cash basis system for recording your income and expenses, and that is how you are completing your tax return. Whereas normally it’s assumed you’re on the […] (Read More)

Instrument purchases and expensing them in your accounts and tax return. Let’s clean up a couple of terms here, as many people as about capital gains tax on their instrument purchases instead of capital allowances on their instruments. Capital Gains Tax is a tax on the profit when you sell (or ‘dispose of’) something (an […] (Read More)

Marriage Transfer Allowance Adjustments   The government have slightly adjusted the way you claim the marriage transfer allowance. I have a knowledge base article on the basics here >>> https://bit.ly/43tMNUn As a quick recap, it is a way that married couples (and civil partners)  can save up to £250 in tax. If one person earns less […] (Read More)

6 Reasons To Get Your Tax Return Done Before the Middle of July. Now I tend to work late into the night but don’t expect me to be at my desk by 10am. Ain’t gonna happen. But part of my wind down in the evening is to turn on Challenge TV at 11pm and have […] (Read More)

Child Actor and Tax: What You Need To Know   There seems to be a flurry of activity with children being on film sets both in the UK and overseas, and with that comes a lot of misconceptions about children and tax. I did a blog post way back in 2016, and nothing has changed […] (Read More)

How do I account for expenses being paid to me? The key question of the week has all been about reimbursable expenses. What are reimbursable expenses, you say? It’s a very posh thing, isn’t it? So let’s take the example of a music teacher. Now, quite often you will put your pupils in for ABRSM […] (Read More)

Class 2 National Insurance for the self-employed Issues     I would like to have a quick chat to you about Class 2 National Insurance for the self-employed, and the problems you may or may not know you are having. If you were a person that worked for what my father would call a normal […] (Read More)

Marriage Transfer Allowance ” title=”YouTube video player” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen > This week’s hot topic all seems to be about the marriage transfer allowance. What is the Marriage Transfer Allowance? What this is, is if you have a husband and wife, husband and husband, wife and wife, Civil Partners, etc, whatyou can do is if one […] (Read More)

So this week, I had a really interesting phone call with somebody and that led to a phone call from somebody else with exactly the same question & they both got exactly the same answer. They were after about this working from home allowance as employees. Now you might remember that for tax years 2020/2021 […] (Read More)

Child Benefit Charge Threshold   Okay. So the fifth of October, that’s fast approaching, well, maybe not that fast, but it’s coming very soon. And there is something sneaky that the government has done or the treasury has done or HMRC has done, that not many people are realizing affecting people earning over £50,000 per […] (Read More)

Is your spring clean clutter clearance taxable? I’ve done it myself–got rid of items (mainly clothes) that I no longer fit into in order to declutter the wardrobe, garage, loft and other hiding places for this stuff. I could spend a week doing it–no, maybe a month. I’m then left with what am I going […] (Read More)

Are you over-claiming travel expenses? The 24 Month Rule. Now this is a biggie for the employed and self-employed, so pay attention. This has been around since 1998 so it should not be a surprise but it is either ignored or just not known about. It all relates to claiming travel costs to a temporary […] (Read More)

  This is a really, really quick video, with a bit more information all about grants – Test & Trace Support Payments – Are these taxable? This time we are talking about the Test and Trace Support Payments that you might get if you are self-employed and on a low income. So we know that […] (Read More)

This video is all about your payment on account for self-assessment. I’ve already produced a payment on account video, but this one takes it into a little bit more detail, explains how the calculation is made and the panic that will ensue when you find out you are definitely having to pay a payment on […] (Read More)

Small Trader Income   This video outlines the main points relating to small trader income and how it is viewed by HMRC. Small trader relief Great news, from the 6th of April 2017, there is something called a small trader relief of a thousand pounds. There’s also a thousand pounds property income relief. Trade can […] (Read More)

The purpose of this video is to talk to you about capital allowances for the self-employed and what exactly are they? What are Capital Allowances? So this tends to be expensive purchases that can be in the business. It can last a couple of years or more. Normally its over 1 year, but then people […] (Read More)

Getting a Mortgage If You are Self Employed   The purpose of this video is just to give a few hints and tips for the self-employed wanting to get a mortgage, what hoops you need to jump through and what kind of information you need to present. So a bit of a boring statistic first, […] (Read More)

Employing Family Members   This video is all about employing your family members in your business if you are a sole trader. Employing a family member means that you are spending money out of your business. Well, hey. But that gives you a reduction in profit, and that could be a double woo-hoo. Because obviously […] (Read More)

  This is just a quick video about the SEISS grant. If you are self-employed, you may have already received something from HMRC about whether you might be eligible for it, or you might’ve seen something on various Facebook posts or other social media sites and be thinking that you might be able to get […] (Read More)

Hi there and welcome to our quick training guide on car usage and mileage allowance or car usage allowance for yourself, either in your business or in your employer’s business. So we’re going to be looking at this in two different ways. The first one is if you’re an employee, so whether this is a […] (Read More)

This episode is all about working from home and the Working From Home Allowance you can get. So, we’re going to be covering employees and self-employment. So, employees. It might sound a bit new for people, but the ability to work from home for employees has been around for a number of years. And it […] (Read More)