Skip to Content

UK budget will help authors

9 April 2001

The recent UK budget included a proposal which could substantially improve authors’ tax position. It is proposed that authors and other creative artists should be allowed to average their income over two consecutive years for tax purposes, rather than having advances and other payments received by authors taxed as a lump sum. For the authors to qualify, their profits in the lower-earning of the two years must be less than 75% of those in the higher-earning year.

A recent and rather alarming Society of Authors survey of authors’ income, showed that about half of the Society’s members earned less than the full-time equivalent of the national minimum wage. It is clearly vital that authors are helped to maximise their income by minimising the tax burden they bear.