Finance

If I were to work Freelance in the UK, I would have to pay my own taxes as a Sole Trader. I would also have to pay National insurance contributions. The 2021-22 tax year contributions are as follows:

Anything up to £12,570 isn’t taxed,

anything earned between £12,571 to £50,270 gets taxed 20%,

between £50,271 to £150,000 is taxed 40%

and anything above that is taxed 45%.

Source from the government website: https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates

National insurance is worked out with 2 classes. Class 2 if your profits are more than £6,725 a year, in which you pay £3.15 a week, or Class 4 if your profits are more than £9,881 a year, in which you pay 10.25% on profits between £9,881 and £50,270, and 3.25% on profits over that amount.

Source from the government website: https://www.gov.uk/self-employed-national-insurance-rates

Examples of financial documents which I would be using if I entered the solo freelance industry.

Invoice Sheet:

This document uses an altered iteration of a real invoice document I have previously used in my existing freelance endeavours.

Freelance Finance Sheet – 1 Years time:

Budgeting sheet for in a year’s time living in a flat in north Greenwich with my partner, and using real world websites to calculate the appropriate bills, rent prices, etc.

Freelance Finance Sheet – Now:

Budgeting sheet based on my current living situation and parental assistance.

My current day rate is around £150, with me usually stating it’s £15/hr, or i’ll quote a project based off how many hours I have worked. However recently, from my contractor, I’ve been advised to ask for more as big clients usually pay it. My most recent industry interaction paid around £600, for which was roughly over 30 hours of work, spread over the time of around 2 weeks combined.

I looked at other suggested freelance rates, specifically more for motion graphics and animation to compare, as this would be my chosen freelance work, with high-level previs projects being primarily studio based.

This information comes from Upwork, which is a very popular freelance platform similar to Fivver or PeoplePerHour. Converted to GBP, beginner is recommended to be £21, Intermediate £44, and advanced £248.50 per hour.

ANIMATION / PREVIS SALARIES

Animator Salaries are varied, but Payscale shows this to be the average salary for an animator:

Source: https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Animator/Salary

Using “Glassdoor”, I found more indications for average salaries for Previs / layout jobs.

Another interesting find, was seeing that the salaries in LA, are actually significantly higher. A small thing to consider.

Looking more into the companies I was doing research for, I found more specific company salaries based off job roles also listen on Glassdoor. I also found salaries for other companies such as PixoMondo