Is a tattoo artist self-employed?

In the UK, if you’re a tattoo artist, you usually rent space in a tattoo studio. Tattoo artists are therefore not often employed by the studios but work for themselves instead. 

If you’re starting out as a tattoo artist, you should consider:

• Do you have enough income to support you financially?
• Are you prepared for when you pay tax?
• Do you know what you can expense and how?
• Do you understand the tax return process?

Income as a self-employed tattoo artist

Often, tattoo artists’ income is not purely made from doing tattoos. You can make money from any merchandise that you sell (e.g. t-shirts, posters and prints etc.) which will also be included in your tax return. 

What tax do tattoo artists pay?

When it comes to tax, it’s pretty simple, even though it may seem confusing if you’ve not had to do it before. There are two taxes to be aware of: income tax and National Insurance. In terms of when to pay, here are some deadlines to pencil into your diary.

Income Tax

Income Tax is paid by everyone, whether employed or self-employed. What you owe is based on how much money you earn every year. The rates are subject to change, often in April following the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Autumn Budget. For the current tax year, the rates are as follows:

National Insurance

Paying different types of National Insurance gives you access to various state-provided benefits. These include the Job Seekers’ Allowance, the Marriage Allowance and the state pension. 

But not all National Insurance classes are created equal. As an employed individual, you have the security of not only employment law but access to all of the state-provided safety nets. For a self-employed tattoo artist, it’s not so simple. You have to pay class 4 National Insurance. But to be eligible to certain benefits, you have to make voluntary contributions to other classes.

Check out the table below to see who pays what, when and how much is owed.

Tattooist expenses

One of the benefits of being self-employed is that you can deduct your business spending from your earnings to be more tax-efficient. Or, put simply, to reduce your tax bill.

To do this, you must keep a record of everything that you spend and earn. Ideally, doing this digitally is much easier to manage, but it’s up to you how to track your business finances. 

It’s at the discretion of HMRC to decide what’s an allowable expense. Base your decision on whether or not it’s a genuine and necessary expense for your business.

If it is, you should be able to expense it. 

Here are a few examples of what tattoo artists often expense:

• Equipment (e.g. needles, ink etc.)
• Studio supplies 
• Training costs
• Studio rent
• Relevant art book and magazine subscriptions
• Business travel
• Your work phone bill
• Merchandise
• Home office expenses (if you work from home)