Musician and ESA

Flateric
Flateric Online Community Member Posts: 4 Listener
edited August 17 in Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)

Hiya, got a weird one, but if you're on new style ESA and freelance as a musician how does it work with declaring that to DWP? Gigs are sporadic, pay differing amounts and are v last minute sometimes. I know they have a form but it seems very tailored to saray work.

The same goes for selling a record or bit of merch. Is this passive income or earnings? (money is being spent to make the record and merch so that becomes confusing too. Do you just use the profit as income?

Thank you

Comments

  • Albus_Scope
    Albus_Scope Posts: 10,895 Scope Online Community Coordinator

    Heya @Flateric and welcome to the community! Loving the name. 😁

    The first thing you'll need to do is complete a "permitted work" form, which the DWP can supply. Then once that's all done, you'll need to declare any hours worked and income made from gigs and merch. Merch etc would count as income for this. I understand this can be massively sporadic, so I'd suggest doing either a weekly declaration, or a monthly one for both hours worked and income, whichever timeframe feels more comfortable.

    So what's your instrument of choice then? 😊

  • Flateric
    Flateric Online Community Member Posts: 4 Listener

    Thanks so much for the quick response. I'm mainly a vocalist but also play guitar. The main thing that's confusing me is that the permitted work form seems to speak about future work, as opposed to declaring hours worked in the past. Is the idea that you fill in a permitted work form that generically describes the freelance work and then do specific declarations per month? If so, is there a different form/process for declaring? Sorry for all the questions.

    Thanks in advance!

  • Albus_Scope
    Albus_Scope Posts: 10,895 Scope Online Community Coordinator

    Not a worry at all @Flateric we're here to help!

    Yes you'd fill in the permitted work stating that it'd be freelance musical work, then each month, you'd need to get in touch with them to declare the amount of hours worked and any income from it. If you speak to an DWP advisor, you can usually agree to a certain timeframe for this. It's a bit of a pain, as I don't think they factored in gig work at all.

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