Let’s face it as music creators and artists, taxes, deductions, and other earnings aren’t the most thrilling topics to us, but they’re essential to understand, so we can be fully prepared as we develop our work in the music industry.

A ‘Portfolio career’ is a term often used for us music creators and others working in the music industry, as we often have many ‘strings to our bow’.. meaning more than one skill or resource within our professional music work.

From performing, to teaching, composing to arranging and musical directing, some people focus on one, and many can even focus on them all. Free-lance / self-employed work underpins the majority of artists and music creators incomes.

According to the MU, ‘Only 10% of musicians are full-time salaried employees. Half of musicians have no regular employment whatsoever. The vast majority of musicians (94%) work freelance for all or part of their income’.

For those of us focusing on creative output and fundamentally getting work, from sometimes many disparate areas – taxes and self-employment can bring a lot of confusion in our daily lives.

We are here to help you; we came up with this short list of websites that have information on how to start:

• https://musiciansunion.org.uk/legal-money/finance-and-tax/tax-and-accounting
• https://www.ism.org/advice-centre/finance-and-tax 
• https://www.helpmusicians.org.uk/get-advice///managing-finances 
• https://www.artistsunionengland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/AUE-tax-guide.pdf 
• https://www.lastminutemusicians.com/blog/tax-musicians-work/
• https://rsaccountancy.co.uk/music-and-taxes-how-to-manage-tax-as-a-musician/