Tag: income

HMRC: Say ‘I do’ to getting your side hustle tax right

  • Wedding season is here – and so is a reminder that income from side hustles may be taxable
  • Anyone earning more than £1,000 may need to register for Self Assessment and declare their income to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC)
  • A free online tool can help people earning extra money check if and when they need to report their additional income

The invitations are out, the venues are booked and the flowers are ordered – but for wedding suppliers who have turned their hobby into a side hustle, there is one more item on the to-do list: checking their tax obligations.

As wedding season gets underway, HMRC is reminding anyone earning extra income from activities like selling wedding stationery, filming the first dance or cake-making, that they will need to tell HMRC if they earn more than £1,000.

HMRC’s Help for Hustles campaign is here to help side hustlers get their tax right, quickly and easily – whether that’s wedding suppliers, parents earning from a hobby business or content creators making money from posting about the latest trends online.

Kevin Hubbard, HMRC’s Director of Small Business & Individuals, said: “For many people, a side hustle is a valuable source of extra income. If you’re earning more than £1,000 a year from your side hustle it’s important to understand your tax responsibilities, and HMRC wants to make that as straightforward as possible.

“You can check if you need to do a Self Assessment tax return by using the tool on GOV.UK. It takes minutes to use, tells you exactly what you need to do and means no unexpected tax bills later.”

If someone has earned more than £1,000 from their side hustle in a tax year, they may need to complete a Self Assessment tax return.

They can use the ‘Where is your additional income from?’ tool on GOV.UK. It takes a few minutes to complete and, if a tax return is required, it will explain how to register.

New entrants to Self Assessment should register for the 2025 to 2026 tax year by 5 October 2026.They must file their online tax return and pay any tax due by 31 January 2027.

The £1,000 threshold covers all side hustle income combined – so someone earning £600 from wedding photography and £500 from social media posts would need to register as their total exceeds £1,000.

Not all extra income is taxable. Selling unwanted personal belongings – such as clearing out a wardrobe – does not usually need to be reported to HMRC.

But regularly selling goods for profit, or providing a service for payment, is likely to count as trading and may need to be declared. Customers can check if they need to tell HMRC about additional income on GOV.UK.

CASE STUDY

“As soon as the wedding bookings started coming in, I knew I needed to look into my tax”

Lianna Dickson, 30, from Livingston, is currently on maternity leave from her role in influencer marketing and runs a successful wedding content creation business alongside family life as a new mum.

After getting married in 2024, Lianna realised she regretted not hiring a wedding content creator to capture behind-the-scenes moments from her own wedding day. With a background in social media and a long-held dream of running her own business, she saw the opportunity to combine both and launched Captured By Fifteen.

Lianna said: “I fell in love with all things weddings following my own and thought it was the perfect way to combine something I loved with the work experience I had.”

As a wedding content creator, Lianna captures authentic, behind-the-scenes moments as they naturally unfold on her phone, delivering raw footage and professionally edited highlight reels within 24 hours.

“Couples can wake up and relive their full wedding the very next morning in the most authentic way.”

Her business took off quickly and within her first year she had shot almost 50 weddings. As bookings and income grew, she knew she needed to look into her tax obligations.

“As soon as I started booking in a number of weddings I knew this was going to be a decent amount of extra money. I read a lot of information on GOV.UK and HMRC’s website.

“Once I realised my income was over the £1,000 trading allowance, I knew I’d need to complete a Self Assessment tax return.

“Everything online was super easy to understand.”

She found the process more straightforward than expected, keeping a detailed spreadsheet with tabs for invoices, outgoings, subscriptions and mileage to stay on top of her figures throughout the year.

“I had my tax return done within the hour. It was so much easier than I thought it would be.

I thought I would need to input every single transaction and that it would take hours, but it wasn’t the case at all – I had been keeping record of all the numbers, so it was really just a case of filling in information and copying the figures over.”

Her advice to anyone in a similar position is simple.

“Just keep track of everything and speak to someone who understands the process — or look up videos of someone explaining it if you struggle with just reading things.”

Lianna explains how her side hustle started on YouTube.

HMRC is encouraging anyone in a similar position – whether filming weddings, photographing events, baking celebration cakes or selling handmade goods – to use the Tax Help for Hustles guide or the free online HMRC tool to check whether they need to register.

City council’s commercial property strategy generates £15m for local services

Council sets sights on new business park

Commercial property investment by the City of Edinburgh Council has provided space for local businesses to thrive while raising over £15 million a year for vital public services, reveals a new report.

A revised version of the Council’s Commercial Property Strategy – which supports existing, new, and expanding enterprises across the Capital – has been approved by the Finance and Resources Committee.

It reveals that the Council is the biggest landlord of commercial property in all of Edinburgh, with a portfolio of 949 assets worth in the region of £245m. This has helped the Council generate income to reinvest towards frontline services and make profits from sales, which have helped with budget savings.

The strategy also supports a number of grassroots and community-based clubs and organisations with low-cost lease arrangements.

Under the refreshed plan, the Council will continue to maximise income growth from buildings in the year ahead while also prioritising support for start-ups and the Capital’s ambitious net zero by 2030 climate commitment.

A change to the strategy will also allow the opportunity for funds from property sales to be reinvested back into the portfolio, helping to streamline and make the most of the council’s assets.

This involves a vision for designing inhouse and building a new, sustainable, business park on Council-owned land at Peffermill – mirroring the successful business park launched in East Hermiston in early 2018. Five years on, the East Hermiston Park is providing 16 fully let units in a 1,600sqm modern industrial space yielding an annual income of £185k.

Councillor Mandy Watt, Finance and Resources Convener, said: “I’m pleased that the refreshed strategy has received Committee’s approval and that we’ll be able to improve on the £15m of income already raised from the council’s property portfolio.

“The opportunities available to support even more jobs at the new low carbon business park in Peffermill are exciting, and I’m looking forward to plans being brought forward later in the year.

“Over the last year, the council has used its properties to support the economic success of the city post-Covid and helped budding businesses to thrive, in ways that maximise income for delivering Council services. The results speak for themselves and we’ve seen first-hand the benefits business parks like the existing one at East Hermiston can bring.

“Against a backdrop of reduced government funding, we’ve had to think creatively to make the most of any income that we can raise for council services. This property strategy is a good example of that.”

‘Economic security trap’ driving millions of Brits to work with Covid symptoms, RSA warns

Millions of British workers are putting themselves and others at risk of Covid-19 due to inadequate sick pay and pressure from their employers, new research shows.  

The RSA (royal society for arts, manufactures and commerce) warns that a growing ‘economic security trap’ — the choice workers face between protecting their income and their health — is contributing significantly to the spread of the virus. 

Polling carried out between 13 Jan and 15 Jan by Yonder (formerly Populus) of UK workers finds: 

  • around one-in-25 (4%) British workers has worked within 10 days of a positive test, rising to one-in-ten (10%) of those in insecure work such as a zero-hours contract, agency work or the gig economy 
  • 6% of British workers have worked with Covid-19 symptoms, rising to 8% of insecure workers and 13% of the self-employed 
  • 12% have been ordered into work when they could have easily and more safely worked from home 
  • only 16% think Statutory Sick Pay is sufficient to meet their needs. 

The RSA calls for an emergency package to address economic insecurity, including: 

Recent RSA research on key workers has found that many staff in key industries report struggling to take time off when unwell, including 29% of those working in social care.  

The RSA has a long-running programme of research dedicated to tackling economic insecurity in the UK. Last year the organisation published A Blueprint for Good Work, putting forward practical solutions for providing good work after the pandemic. 

Alan Lockey, head of RSA’s future work programme, said: “Our polling shows that millions feel forced to put themselves and others at risk of the virus because of insecure work, pressure from bosses, and the failings of our deeply inadequate welfare state.   

“Rishi Sunak must close this ‘economic security trap’ — the terrible trade-off many workers face between their health and putting food on the table — by allowing self-isolating workers to access the furlough scheme, and retaining the £20 per week uplift in universal credit.

“We also need to see help for the millions currently excluded, through no fault of their own – and the self-employed in particular. An ’emergency basic income’ style scheme, using the current tax infrastructure, is the best way to help reach all this group and close the gaps which we believe are helping to increase the infection rate.”