Over the last 20 years governments have introduced various creative tax reliefs to enable organisations to claim back some of their production costs. Two of these – Orchestra Tax Relief and Theatre Tax Relief – are already being used by Making Music members to claim back an average 23% of their concert and event costs. Especially now that a higher rate of relief has been made permanent in the spring budget, these tax reliefs can make a significant contribution to groups’ budgets and facilitate growth and activity.
Dr Alice Carter, treasurer of Henley Symphony Orchestra, explains how claiming Orchestra Tax Relief (OTR) has bridged the income gap in difficult financial times
Why did your group decide to claim OTR?
The financial benefit is substantial. This has kept us afloat through some very challenging times. We lost a major sponsor a few years ago and OTR has kept us going!
Orchestra Tax Relief (OTR) is a government initiative for instrumental groups (not only orchestras!) where you could receive a payment from HMRC equal to a percentage of your production costs.
Despite being called 'Orchestra Tax Relief':
the initiative can apply to many types of instrumental group – so don’t be put off if your group is not a traditional orchestra
you don’t have to be paying tax to claim it.
Groups who put on eligible performances can submit a claim to HMRC each year for the payment.
This online webinar will introduce you to Orchestra Tax Relief, a new source of income for instrumental groups with 12 or more performers, explaining what it is and how your group can benefit from it.
You can find out more about OTR, including whether you are eligible and how to claim, in our resources:
This introduction is the first of three documents on Orchestra Tax Relief (OTR). It gives you an overview of what it is and how it works, and an overall idea if this is something your group would like to look into.
To help you decide we also have two additional documents –
This introduction is the second of three documents on Orchestra Tax Relief (OTR). It gives you an overview of how to set up and run a production company to claim OTR.
This guidance looks at how to keep accrual accounts for your concert production company for the purposes of claiming OTR, and includes examples to help you.
This resource is part of our OTR Part 3 guidance: Keeping records, producing accounts and making a claim. It looks at how to keep accrual accounts for your concert production company for the purposes of claiming OTR.
Organisations claiming Orchestra Tax Relief (OTR) (i.e. the concert production companies) have to prepare their financial statements under the Accruals Basis of accounting which requires that income and expense must be recognized in the accounting periods to which they relate rather than on a cash basis.
