I was wondering if anyone knows anything about writers' taxation in England? I recently met a certain rather affluent celebrity who has a lot of books on the market and he assured me that he doesn't pay tax on any of his books, which I found odd. Is this common do you think?

Writers are self-employed, so that the expenses involved in writing a book (including travel for research) and supporting a career as a writer (including a proportion of running a house) can be offset against earnings on books and also lecturing, journalism and so on.

Perhaps your celebrity acquaintance manages to write off so much as expenses that his earnings after expenses stay below the taxable threshold. Another possibility is that he's formed a limited company to own the books; I'm not sure how it works, but there may be tax advantages to taking an income from that company as dividends or as a director's loan. The other possibility is that he's a tax exile, in which case he can only be in Britain for something like 30 days a year (and would be taxed instead wherever he does live. Ireland I think has extremely generous tax rules specifically for writers and other creative types. Of course, if he has an income separate from writing income, there's nothing to stop him asking his agent to hold on to royalties until he asks for them; they're not earnings till he actually receives them, and he won't be taxed on them.

Emma

Thanks for that Emma. All very useful information. Initially I thought he must have employed a very creative accountant, but who knows? - this guy was so rolling in money that I doubt he'd even notice if he was paying tax. To top it off, he also revealed that every one of his bestselling non-fiction books on the proverbial 'great outdoors' was ghost-written as 'writing's really labour intensive, you know?' Ah, how the other half live.

'writing's really labour intensive, you know?'

Lisa, thank you. That's the best laugh I've had all day. I think I'll go and help Colin lay his patio! (see the Authors North thread!)

Emma

I'm thinking of outsourcing the writing of my next novel to Bangalore...

I would write a long reply, but these finger tips are worn to the bone. Can you get a ghost writer for forum posts?

Can you get a ghost writer for forum posts?

Good idea - then I can blame all typos and literals on them.

Emma

Better still, get a 'virtual you' to do it for you.

There's a couple of SF books I've read recently that detail a future where your 'self' is contained within a hardware core lodged somewhere in your body. If you die, 'you' are simply uploaded into a new shell. The other really cool bit is that you can send off copies of yourself into virtual worlds to attend meetings, interview people and so on.

I could set a copy of myself off writing while I sat in front of the telly all day.

J