ALCS payments and personal tax as second job.

Hi there, I am employed full-time by a UK academic institution, I am a British citizen, living in the UK. My tax code is 1257L, and tax is paid by PAYE by the institution who manages all of that. As part of that job I produce research outputs on which I own the copyright. I have registered these with ALCS as a collecting society and received a whopping £126 this year. 1) Do I need to submit a separate self-assessment tax return for this amount? 2) I also have some self-published books on Amazon, but believe these are set to withhold tax. Total (including ALCS and these) I have not earned over £1000 in a tax year as part of this second job. Do I need to submit a self-assessment tax return? 3) At what point in earning from any external non-PAYEd source like this would I need to submit a self-assessment tax return? Is that £1000? 4) I occasionally receive honorariums from other academic institutions for undertaking work (such as examining PhD dissertations -- like £75) do I need to count this as income towards that £1000 (or whatever the answer to number 3 is)? 5) Is the same true for expenses where I have submitted receipts to a third party (sometimes not based in the UK) who are then refunding cost of travel/accommodation into my bank account but aren't actually paying me for my time? Do I have to submit anything such as the receipts anywhere to avoid this being considered income? Many thanks for any advice. -James

Hi,

If tax is deducted from your book sales and your total royalties from all sources are less than £1000, you would need to complete a Self Assessment tax return, to claim the tax back.  

You can have as many secondary employments as you wish. If your combined employment income exceeds £150000, you will need to complete a Self Assessment tax return.  

A true “honoraria” is generally a payment received by an office holder. It may only be a token payment rather than a commercial fee, but it is clearly a payment which results from holding the office. Such payments are “earnings” for the purposes of section 3(1) SSCBA 1992 and will be liable for Class 1 National Insurance contributions.  

If you are claiming expenses from overseas, you do not need to report the re-imbursed expenses in a Self Assessment tax return.

Thank you.