Blog

Author: Erin Walls

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Spotify Tax Explained: How UK Musicians Are Taxed on Royalties & Subscriptions

1 September 2026

Spotify royalties are taxable income in the UK. If you are still working as a musician they form part of your trading profits; if they come from a back catalogue you have left behind, they are reported as other income instead. Royalties paid through a US distributor lose 30% to withholding tax unless a valid W-8BEN is on file, and anything already deducted can usually be recovered through double tax relief. A personal Spotify Premium subscription is not an allowable expense, because it fails the wholly and exclusively test.

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Twitch Income Tax: What UK Streamers Must Declare and When VAT Registration Kicks In

31 August 2026

Twitch income is taxable in the UK once streaming becomes a trade rather than a hobby, and that covers subscriptions, Bits, donations, sponsorship and gifted items alike. You need to register for Self Assessment once income passes the £1,000 trading allowance, and for VAT once your combined taxable turnover — Twitch payouts, donations, sponsorship and merch together — crosses £90,000, even if no single income stream looks close to that on its own.

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The BFI Cultural Test Explained: How the UK Points System Works and How to Pass It

21 August 2026

You pass the BFI cultural test by scoring 18 points out of 35 for film and high-end TV, or 16 out of 31 for animation and children’s TV, across four sections covering on-screen content, cultural contribution, production hubs and the nationality of key practitioners. Video games use a separate, development-focused version of the same test. Passing gets you a BFI certificate, the entry ticket for AVEC, VGEC or the Independent Film Tax Credit.

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Averaging Relief for Creators of Literary or Artistic Works: Who Can Claim and How

18 August 2026

If more than half of your profit comes from literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works you created yourself, you can ask HMRC to tax two consecutive years on the average of their combined profit rather than year by year. The claim is only available where the lower year comes in under 75% of the higher year, or where one of the two years is nil. It has to be made within 22 months of the end of the later tax year, and it cannot be combined with the cash basis, which has been the default for sole traders since April 2024.