The extras agency all the Game of Thrones extras get their gigs through, Extras NI, has suddenly decided they don't want to bother doing our PAYE stuff anymore so all our extras work will now be classed as self-employed, so we now have do our own tax returns for it.
At first I was annoyed as it seemed like this would make life more complicated, especially with me being on Job Seekers allowance...until I discovered that because my pay from Extras NI will almost certainly be below the self-employed National Insurance band, and my combined income will be under the untaxable income band (as I'm unemployed), I'll actually be slightly better off as I'll now be paying no National Insurance on my pay from Extras NI (national insurance from self-employment is completely separate from the rest of your earnings, but tax is combined earnings). It also turns out that because I'll be under those bands I won't actually have to register as self-employed and do my own tax returns - apparently HMRC likes people to do it anyway but it's not actually a legal requirment unless you're earning enough to owe tax and insurance.
So I don't actually really need to do anything until I get a job and my total income goes above the untaxable personal allowance, or if I get extremely lucky as an extra and start earning more than twice as much from it as I did last year, and not only that but I'll now be keeping ALL of my pay from being an extra due to no longer owing National Insurance. Also, quite a lot of the extras who were previously paying tax on their extras pay might even end up paying less tax on it because now that it's self-employed there are a whole bunch of expenses they can claim to reduce their "profit", including gym memberships and using their home phone and internet connections to get their extras work.
So my annoyance has turned into being quite pleased, which is a nice and rather rare feeling.
