Peers urge Treasury to speed up admin for touring musicians

Members of the House of Lords have raised concerns that the Treasury is not doing enough to help address bureaucracy for UK musicians and crew members travelling in the European Economic Area (EEA).

Speaking in a debate on self-employment on 12 February, crossbench peer Nicholas Trench asked what steps the government is taking to improve the provision of A1 forms,  a certificate issued by HMRC confirming that temporary workers only need to pay UK National Insurance, noting that the documentation often doesn’t arrive until after a tour has ended.

In response, Baroness Charlotte Vere, Parliamentary Secretary for the Treasury, said she had flagged the issue and that HMRC would be rolling out “significant improvements to the application process”. However, she acknowledged the current situation facing musicians is “is not good enough” and that “more needs to be done”.

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A1 forms, which were a requirement when the UK was part of the EU, are issued individually for each trip and each country for only the specified dates entered on the form. Since Brexit, however, the Musicians' Union say the forms take longer to acquire and process.

Trench noted that both LIVE (Live Music Industry Venues and Entertainment) and the Independent Society of Musicians had written to the Treasury about the issue.

“Many musicians and crew are receiving their forms after a tour has ended, meaning that money is withheld, potentially permanently. Ultimately, the Treasury will be the loser,” he said.

“I appreciate that there is a recovery strategy, but as the April deadline approaches, there has been no noticeable improvement.”

Vere said that HMRC is trying to clear the backlog by allocating "extra resources to help answer phone calls and deal with correspondence across all national insurance services”, including “the training and deployment of more people to process A1 applications”.

She added that HMRC also hopes a new digital A1 certificate application form would help speed up the application process.  

When Shadow Treasury spokesperson for the Treasury Lord Livermore asked why the certificates themselves could not be digitised, Vere said: “Where that is possible, we will look at it, but we are now focused on ensuring that the processes are sped up.

“It is important that we get the automation in, but it cannot be done end to end, as in some cases, one needs caseworkers’ judgment to issue the A1 certificate.”

Orchestra tax relief

Other peers queried whether government could be taking other action to help touring musicians, with Lord Berkeley commenting that “the problems over visas for musicians and singers are now compounded by the fact that foreign opera houses and festivals are beginning to boycott British artists.”

Raising the issue of orchestra tax relief, Lib Dem Lords spokesperson Lord Storey also pressed the issue, asking if the government would commit to the permanent retention of the current 50% orchestra tax relief (OTR) rate due to end in 2025.

Introduced in 2016, OTR offers companies producing live orchestral performances or commissioning new musical work tax relief against creative and production costs. Previously 25%, it was temproarily raised to 50% in October 2021 and will drop to 35% next year and 25% in 2026.

In response, Vere noted that the orchestra tax relief has been worth £62m since 2016 and that the “Treasury keeps taxes under review.”

Cross-bench peer Lord Aberdare asked if government would reconsider its position on OTR in the European Economic Area. He said: “The government’s plan to remove orchestra tax relief completely from performances in the EEA will have a hugely damaging effect on the viability of such touring, making it hard and, for some orchestras, even impossible to continue to tour in Europe. 

“Will the Minister and her colleagues look again at this proposal and, if it cannot be scrapped, what support might the government offer to orchestras to help offset the income they will lose and to enable them to continue to tour in Europe?” 

To which Vere replied: “Obviously, we have to make choices in this area. We are content with where we are headed in terms of removing EEA activity from the orchestra tax.”