Paying Tax on YouTube Earnings Guide - HMRC UK

Hey nice Guide, very very useful! I was wondering though.... I am with a channel in the USA, and I'm filling out my UK tax form now. But should I be filling out the foreign income bit? It comes into my Paypal in US dollars you see... I've tried to do it this way online, but as I have paid no tax in the USA it won't allow me to go any further with it and keeps saying there is an error as the tax bit says 0. Any help is very much appreciated :)
 
Thomas Hughes said:
Hey nice Guide, very very useful! I was wondering though.... I am with a channel in the USA, and I'm filling out my UK tax form now. But should I be filling out the foreign income bit? It comes into my Paypal in US dollars you see... I've tried to do it this way online, but as I have paid no tax in the USA it won't allow me to go any further with it and keeps saying there is an error as the tax bit says 0. Any help is very much appreciated :)
Click to expand...

Im not a tax advisor but what I do is only write down my earnings in GBP after currency conversions and keep records of the conversions from within PayPal. If at the end of the tax year you have remaining USD currency then that is when I would write it down as foreign income. I dont understand your circumstances fully, are you living in the UK or the USA?
 
Michael said:
Im not a tax advisor but what I do is only write down my earnings in GBP after currency conversions and keep records of the conversions from within PayPal. If at the end of the tax year you have remaining USD currency then that is when I would write it down as foreign income. I dont understand your circumstances fully, are you living in the UK or the USA?
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Thanks for the quick reply :) - I'm not all that savy with this tax stuff.

I am living in the UK, I have applied for self assesment and I am currently filling out the form online for 2014-2015.
So, I am part of a network on youtube. I get 70% and the network get 30%. The money comes into my paypal in USD and is converted to GBP and I then put the money in my bank account. I did try and speak to HMRC on the phone but I think they just confused me more.

I also have a normal job, which I am taxed monthly for.

I have it filled out at the moment as normal self employed income with all the losses and bits and bobs set to 0. And I have come to the foreign income part and I am not sure whether or not I should be putting it all in there, as it is coming into my paypal as USD and then converted. My brian is about to melt I think. The channel can't help me... HMRC don't really know how to speak to explain it to me without using all these abbreviations... hehe.

I do have it all in a spreadsheet and will likely add expenses and stuff once I get my head around this bit.....

Cheers :)
 
Thomas Hughes said:
Thanks for the quick reply :) - I'm not all that savy with this tax stuff.

I am living in the UK, I have applied for self assesment and I am currently filling out the form online for 2014-2015.
So, I am part of a network on youtube. I get 70% and the network get 30%. The money comes into my paypal in USD and is converted to GBP and I then put the money in my bank account. I did try and speak to HMRC on the phone but I think they just confused me more.

I also have a normal job, which I am taxed monthly for.

I have it filled out at the moment as normal self employed income with all the losses and bits and bobs set to 0. And I have come to the foreign income part and I am not sure whether or not I should be putting it all in there, as it is coming into my paypal as USD and then converted. My brian is about to melt I think. The channel can't help me... HMRC don't really know how to speak to explain it to me without using all these abbreviations... hehe.

I do have it all in a spreadsheet and will likely add expenses and stuff once I get my head around this bit.....

Cheers :)
Click to expand...

What I do is this I will get payments into PayPal in USD, EUR etc and convert them, I print off the conversion transaction from PayPal as a record as well as the amount coming in so I have both filed, I dont believe that is fully necessary but I just do that anyway. Once I have done that I write the GBP amount down only and dont bother with handling foreign income at all because it is converted into GBP.

I found this:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/354350/sa106-notes.pdf

Scroll down to Income from overseas sources, that seems to be how I handle mine.
 
What about if it's a family channel and each is paid a wage? Or if you use and pay movie "extras"? I'm guessing these are all expenses?
Is there a maximum wage that can be paid to minors and if it exceeds the £10k allowance will they also need to register separately as self employed and complete tax returns ?
 
Youtubehopeful said:
What about if it's a family channel and each is paid a wage? Or if you use and pay movie "extras"? I'm guessing these are all expenses?
Is there a maximum wage that can be paid to minors and if it exceeds the £10k allowance will they also need to register separately as self employed and complete tax returns ?
Click to expand...

In that case you have two choices, either register as a company and form one and pay out wages using PAYE which in my opinion is overkill, what I would choose to do would be to split the earnings and have each family member do their own taxes but thats where expenses could be an issue, you could just split the expenses over the whole family and each member would have 10K personal allowance. That would require you all to register and complete returns yes but there would be savings to made with 10k allowance each :D PS. I am not a tax advisor or lawyer so I could be incorrect about that second option but it does seem to be a way of going about it.
 
If you are earning a lot, it might be worth setting up a Ltd company - there are many advantages you can have as a ltd in terms of taxation, and in terms of saving tax. You'd have to be earning a lot though in order for it to be worth, possibly above £50k a year. Otherwise, you'll just pay taxes through the self assessment - make sure you're hiring an accountant to do the tax return, or you can use accurate online tax calculators ( ex income-tax.co.uk) to calculate your tax and do the returns yourself. Last year I made £37K from AdSense (both YouTube and websites), and I know the pain when you have to give a part of that away :)
 
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