Library · Freelancing
Tax, rates, invoicing and getting paid, which end more careers than a lack of talent.
Most people who leave this industry do not leave because they were not good enough. They leave because the money stopped making sense: rates that never rose, invoices unpaid for ninety days, a tax bill nobody warned them about, and no cushion when three months went quiet.
None of that is taught anywhere in a film education and all of it is learnable. This is the least glamorous page in the library and probably the most useful. It is for anybody freelancing at any grade, and particularly for people in their first two years who have not yet had the bad January.
Where to start
Four things, before your second paid job.
01
Register, and understand the deadlines
If you are self-employed you must register with HMRC and file a return. The dates and the payment-on-account system are what ambush people, and HMRC’s own free webinars explain both.
02
Find out what your grade is paid
Bectu and the guilds publish rate cards by department and grade, free. Read yours. A large number of people in this industry are paid below the published rate because they never looked it up.
03
Set up invoicing properly on day one
Numbered invoices, clear payment terms, your details, and a record of what you sent and when. Chasing money is much easier when your paperwork is unarguable.
04
Know where the help is before you need it
The Film and TV Charity runs a free, confidential, around-the-clock line covering money, legal problems and mental health for everybody working behind the scenes. Save the number now rather than on the bad day.
Nothing on this page is financial, tax or legal advice. It is a list of where the free, authoritative material is. For your own situation, talk to an accountant or an adviser.
The list
Free, checked, and every one of these links out.
HMRC — help and support if you are self-employed (opens in a new tab) · Free · live and recorded webinars, videos and email updates · from your first paid job
Record keeping, Self Assessment, expenses, payments on account. Dull, authoritative, and free. Set invoicing up properly on day one: more careers end here than for any lack of talent.
GOV.UK — working for yourself (opens in a new tab) · Free · authoritative · everyone
When you must tell HMRC, whether you are trading, and what registering actually involves. The source everything else paraphrases badly.
Bectu — rate cards (opens in a new tab) · Free · published third-party data · before your next conversation about money
Published UK rates by grade. Find out what your grade is paid before you are asked what you charge, not after.
Bectu — agreements and grading schemes (opens in a new tab) · Free to read · paid membership
The union’s agreements and the grading behind them: overtime, turnaround, sixth and seventh days, and what a normal offer looks like.
Unscripted TV Union — rate negotiation guidance (opens in a new tab) · Free to read · part of Bectu · unscripted television
Rate guidance written for unscripted freelancers, where pay is least transparent and the published drama cards do not apply.
Pact (opens in a new tab) · Free to read in part · paid membership · the other side of the deal
The producers’ trade body, with legal and business affairs guidance in its resource hub. Understanding how productions are contracted is half of understanding your own contract.
The Film and TV Charity (opens in a new tab) · Free · confidential · 24-hour support line on 0800 054 0000
Money advice, legal advice, hardship support and a 24-hour line, open to anybody who has worked behind the scenes. The gap between jobs is where people leave, and it is usually about money rather than ability. An independent organisation, unconnected to us.
ScreenSkills — Getting into the screen industries (opens in a new tab) · Free · free account · five modules
Finding work, applying and interviewing, treated as a method rather than as luck. The business half of a freelance career starts here.
Every link here goes to the owner’s own page, in a new tab. How we treat other people’s work · Last checked September 2026.
Money on it
An accountant, mostly
An accountant with other clients in film and television
Worth the fee almost immediately. The industry has specific patterns — short contracts, mixed payroll and self-employed income, kit purchases, travel and subsistence — and an accountant who has seen them typically saves more than they cost in the first year.
Paid
Union membership
Bectu for most crew grades, and the relevant guild or union for writers and directors. Worth it for the contract advice, the collective rate agreements and the individual representation when something goes wrong, which is the moment people wish they had joined.
Paid
Basic bookkeeping software, or a good spreadsheet
Worth it if it is the difference between doing your records monthly and doing them in a panic in January. The cheapest option you will use is the correct one.
Paid or free
Where the gap gets filled
By practising the conversation before you have to have it.
Our courses build the money conversation in deliberately: what your grade is worth, how to say it, what to do when an invoice is late, and how to leave a job you should not have taken. In a freelance career it is not an add-on skill, so it is not an add-on module.
If you are in trouble with money right now, do not start with this page. Start with the Film and TV Charity, free and confidential, and come back to the rate cards when the immediate thing is handled.
Demi — interview
To be embedded once uploaded.
