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NUJ advice to freelances is to challenge clients who insist on deducting tax at source, explaining to said clients that you are fully aware of the regulations. Experience tells us that more often than not this is accepted by clients. You just need to convince them that you know what youre doing, and, as importantly, you indemnify them against any action by HMRC or other tax authorities. What clients may reasonably demand of freelances is that they register as a supplier. For example, this seems to be required for all work carried out for HMG departments, and it is also the case with many large private corporations. Clients may also insist on such things as liability insurance. Registering as a supplier need not be a problem for an organised and disciplined sole trader. It should not be required of freelances that they set themselves up as limited companies. Provided, that is, they are covered by liability insurance. As for NUJ membership, any individual who derives >50% of their income from communications work of pretty much any kind is eligible to join the union. Subscriptions are based on work sector, employed/freelance status, and income. If for whatever reason a member's income drops to a particularly low level, it is possible for them to pay significantly reduced subs. This is often an issue with freelances in the current economic climate, with underemployed traders paying as little as a fiver a month, instead of the usual £15-20. Under no circumstances would I consider *not* being a member of the NUJ, no matter how low my earnings. As long as I consider myself a journalist, it is a no brainer. I do not retain the services of an accountant. It is simply not worth it, given the simplicity of my accounts, and that of HMRC's self-assessment system for sole traders. Francis On 29 May 14, at 14:38, Paul G Raven <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > While the law may be clear, the interpretation of it is less so; this is why lawyers make such a lot of money. > > From personal experience, while UK law may well state that my tax affairs are my own concern and not those of my client, trying to get paid by any USian corporate entity for freelance work without arranging for the pertinent amount of tax to be collected (or exempted, depending on circumstances) at source is pretty much impossible; because of the way *their* laws are interpreted, no company will take the risk of being audited and then having to prove that some foreign freelancer paid their tax properly in their domicile nation. They literally just will not authorise a payment to you until you've registered as a supplier and stated which tax treaties (if any) are pertinent. You can try telling them it's your problem not theirs until you're blue in the face; all you'll achieve is delaying the expedition of whatever payment you're due. > > And I'm informed (by colleagues who've done a deal more of the same sort of work than I have) that HMRC tend to tax you the full whack on any and all overseas payments to self-assessors, whether you pre-emptively demonstrate tax was paid (or exempted) at source or not, and that it's up to you to argue it back out of them -- which is probably a job for an accountant, because the laughably named "explanatory notes" for the US taxation forms are Byzantine in the extreme, and our own self-assessment system (while notably less hideous than that of our Stateside friends, thank Jeebus) is no model of simplicity, either. > > The rule of thumb I was offered goes something like "if clawing back the tax isn't going to gain you enough rebate to make it possible to pay an accountant and have some left over, you might as well just suck it up, accept the losses, and thereby avoid weeks of frustrating bureaucratic bullsh*t". > > That said, maybe NUJ membership would achieve the same thing at a lower price; the big caveat here is that I've never earned enough as a freelancer to make it worth me joining the union or hiring an accountant! If you're in that space, time and money are equally precious and scarce; if you have to spend the best part of a week faffing around to recover less than you could have earned in that time, it's very hard to justify making the effort. *shrug* > > PGR Dr Francis Sedgemore journalist, writer and editor telephone: +44 7840 191336 website: sedgemore.com twitter: @hesgen ********************************************************************** Commands - send an email (any subject) to [log in to unmask] with one of the following messages (ignoring text in brackets) set psci-com nomail (to stop receiving messages while on holiday) set psci-com mail (to resume getting messages) signoff psci-com (to leave the list) Subscribe here https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=psci-com Contact list owner at [log in to unmask] Small print and JISCMail acceptable use policy https://sites.google.com/site/pscicomjiscmail/the-small-print **********************************************************************