Income and Outgoings of my Business

Business Finances - Expenses

Many self-employed businesses are run from home which means that if there wasn't a procedure involved in tackling how those businesses were taxed they'd be taxed in precisely the same way as another business which has to pay for it's premises and other costs which is slightly unfair to those working from home.

If a business is at home then often many business owned thing will be used personally as well, for example someones bedroom could also be their office space when working. It is up to the business owner to divide the usage up and work out how much of it is used by the business and how much it is used personally, if they're using their phone for both business and personal but 20% of the time the calls are personal then around 80% of the bill is a business expense that can be included within the businesses outgoings.

As I will be running my business from the comfort of my home I can claim certain expenses from that. I know that a majority of the time I'll be using my home internet and phone bill for personal use to I've dedicated around 10% of the bill as an expense to my business. As my business grows this may increase but for now it's a deducted cost that allows for the business to pay for whatever is being used by the business.

The types of things that can be claimed as expenses included:

• Heating
• Electricity
• Council Tax
• Mortgage interest or rent
• Internet and telephone use

Cultural Policies - Current Events

There are a lot of things happening currently that effect the economy and creative industries massively, the spread of the Coronavirus is causing a large economic crisis which could mean the creative industries take a massive hit. A lot of precautions are being placed for the future but the main problem at the moment is the fear of the public, social media is creating a lot of fake news which is causing a lot of people to avoid social situations, this puts large events and public entertainment companies at a lot of risk. Theatres often rely on plays and revenue from a lot of older patrons, most theatres struggle even with a constant influx of income, many companies like this will suffer as the revenue will be cut and then if the government chooses to shut things down they're at even more risk as the little they have a side will quickly disappear. The recent budget update that the government has released may help things like this but it's likely that a lot of arts companies will suffer from the affects of this outbreak.

Although there will be a lot of situations that are made worse by this virus, one industry that may thrive is the television and online media industry, shows will run as people when in self-isolation will want entertainment, youtube will become a resource for a lot of peoples boredom as they'll want something to do. If self-isolation becomes a realism we'll all be binge watching shows, watching live-streams and vlogs, that industry may boom more than it has before. Shows like 'Critical Role' have a very small crew and equipment so during these times they'll still be able to produce content and more viewers will be available to watch so their income and donations will increase potentially causing them as a small business to boom temporarily.

This outbreak will kill some businesses and revive certain struggling businesses, at the moment it's hard to work out which ones will survive.

Legal Bodies and Regulatory Frameworks

After conducting research and partaking in work experience with a marketing company it has developed my ideas on things I'd need to consider for my business, one thing specifically being the use and regulation of intellectual properties. When assisting in the creation of some corporate videos for my work experience provider Scooterpac I learnt the struggle of getting usable music for corporate videos.

Obviously because of copyright laws I couldn't use music that the company didn't hold the licence for as the song author would be entitled to these things:

As the owner of the work's copyright, they have the sole authority to:

• copy the music
• issue, lend or rent copies to the public
• perform, show or play the music in public
• communicate the music to the public (i.e. broadcasting it via TV, radio, internet etc.)

Because of the music being owned by another company I couldn't simply just use the music within corporate videos, we decided that if we bought one license at an unlimited use rate we could use it on any of the marketing videos in the future so although the licensing was very expensive we could use it for many things thus making it more cost effective. Instead of paying $19 per video for a different selection of music we paid $49 for unlimited uses which in the long run works out a lot cheaper. To get around the same price with single uses you'd only be able to get three licences for the same price. It means that the business has effectively licensed music that can be used for an infinite amount of videos, for each video the value for money goes up and the overall cost per video reduces massively. 

Knowing this I can place it within my own businesses budgetary requirements because if I didn't use an unlimited license I could end up spending way more money than necessary. I also got the opportunity of learning how Scooterpac trademarks their own intellectual property and how important it is to do so, I found out that when you 'trademark' a word you also have to get it registered afterwards which is the difference between a TM mark and an R mark on a specific word, logo or marketing materials. There are also different classes for different trademarks, for example, if I was to trademark a vehicle called the 'SamWagon' I would list it within the trademark vehicles section as I would have no reason to stop a company in the kitchen appliances section who'd also named their cooker a 'SamWagon' as it would be an entirely different product. If a company did try to call their vehicle a 'SamWagon' after my company trademarked I could take legal action and sue them. 

After learning this I learnt how essential it is to make sure you've checked item/character and logo/business-names as if not you can end up in a situation where another company who owns the trademark can then themselves take legal action against you. 

Voiceover Script for Scooterpac - Skills Development

Whilst partaking work-experience with Scooterpac I have been tasked with making them a couple of troubleshooting videos but before I could do those I needed to create voice-over scripts as a stage of planning, that meant that I would have to learn how to create one that worked. Luckily, they provided me with a template so I could easily start planning for the video.