ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

10 years, 7 months ago - Tony Oldham

It's simple enough to set up <£100 online and you can DIY, but you should consider the wiser implications of operating a company correctly. If you needed an accountant to do your annual accounts, then you are looking at £500 upwards minimum. Then, you have annual filing deadlines as follows:

Companies House Annual Return
Companies House Annual Accounts
HMRC Annual CT Return
HMRC Annual Accounts (usually with return)
PAYE monthly and end of year deadlines/ returns P35, and P11d's
Monthly PAYE payment and annual CT payment
VAT if applicable

Miss the deadlines and if you are not up to the admin, then fines and penalties come heavy and fast. I know individuals who set up for the prestige only to treat the company as dormant or get it struck off because they simply could not afford the annual cost of running a company. As an example, if you are more than three months late for filing you annual companies house return, and the fine is £750. That is just one fine in relation to one deadline.

Go this route if you need limited liability or you are serious about business, but from my own experience, a production company doesn't gaurantee you any doors opening.

In my view, it's much easier/ cheaper/ less red tape to operate as a sole trader and perhaps hold a dormant company under the same name as I appreciate the BBC and so forth used to require that you are a company to pitch. Recently, C4 etc have opened it up a little.

Best of Luck, Tony

10 years, 7 months ago - Brian McGleenon

thank you all so much, this has been invaluable advice. Happy Christmas.

10 years, 7 months ago - Parvez Zabier

I can help you with that .... I am a Film Production Accountant.

10 years, 7 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

Bear in mind you commit yourself to about a grand a year in accounting costs for even the most basic Ltd company filing.

10 years, 7 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

Marlom, I suspect it's going to come down to clarifying that there's no hidden employment to HMRC - the rules around self employment in film are actually somewhat different than the rest of the world. Even a 20+ year self employed spark may be deemed employed and must be paid PAYE for projects over 7 days by HMRC if they haven't applied for specific dispensation (Lorimer).

It may also be basic filtering of less serious candidates - it might eliminate 95% of 10000 potential applicants, still leaving 500 who take the application seriously enough to have set up a company around their work.

Just guesses, but I agree if it was all about liability then that could be handled contractually quite easily!

10 years, 7 months ago - Lee 'Wozy' Warren

Yes. It is rather straight forward. If you message me offline I will walk you through it.

lee.warren(at)BadEdenEntertainment.com

10 years, 7 months ago - Marlom Tander

One thing that annoys me is funding bodies requiring that people form limited companies.

Most of the time there is no logic to this at all, and in fact the funders money would be better protected (if that's the issue) by simply requiring personal guarantees and transparent accounting. Ask them WHY they need a limited company.

But, yes it's simple, and yes, there is an overhead.

10 years, 7 months ago - Glyn Carter

If you can't cope with setting up a company yourself directly with companies house, you won't be able to cope with making a film. It's easy and costs £15 - use the default Articles etc. And you won't get scammed. Otherwise Tony Oldham is right. You should be able to get the necessary accounting done for £500-£600 if you shop around and you're decent with book-keeping. Maybe less if you don't have many transactions, no VAT etc. Insurance costs may be higher.

Consider registering for VAT - can save 20% of production costs, but HMRC will want to see some income with VAT on it sooner or later.

Even if you're self-employed you might want an accountant. Go see local small accountants/tax services. A dormant company can be done DIY but will still serve for initial BBC etc needs. You can make it active when you have income to cover the accounting cost and you want to move on from self-employment.

10 years, 7 months ago - Tony Oldham

If you have no other option from the development company fund, then you have to go that route if the money on offer is available and worth the effort as detailed above.

Just stay on top of things, but initially to set up is under £100 and they will arrange an appointment to set up a company bank account which is a requirement of running a company. Most online services are straight forward and simple enough. Just check Companies house webcheck first to see if the name you want is taken, and then if it isn't, also check Internet domain search engines to see if your matching web domain and email addresses and register it all about the same time.

10 years, 7 months ago - Nicola Gaughan

Be very careful about buying online. I bought an off the peg one via an accountant. I basically lost my whole company as the accountant turned out to be dodgy. He hadn't stamped the document which transferred ownership to me and he still owned it. My company went down. He did it to 1,000s of people and the Inland Revenue had to set up a whole department just to deal with the fall out.

10 years, 7 months ago - Marlom Tander

Paddy - agreed. Though I suspect that what really happened was that some years ago someone decided it would seem professional and ever since then it's been copied and pasted so often that it's become standard practice and the people involved have no idea why :-) But sometimes people call me cynical :-)