In the last few years, some of entertainment’s most iconic performers have left us. Both Prince and David Bowie passed in 2016, and just this year we lost Aretha Franklin. It seems a lot more recent, but it has been almost ten years since Michael Jackson passed away at age 50.
Craig A. Manzino, a Partner-in-Charge of the Business Management Group of Prager Metis CPAs, a member of Prager Metis International Group was mentioned in the in the Long Island Business News March 2018. Read the full article here.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (“TCJA”) was signed into law by President Trump on December 22, 2017. It has been hailed as the largest overhaul of the US federal income tax since 1986. While many diverse industries will realize significant changes, tax-wise, as a result of the passage of the TCJA, there are provisions which have a significant impact upon the media and entertainment industries.
With the business landscape changing, and traditional job roles no longer fitting into narrowly defined boxes, this is an important time to highlight what accountants do and what the role of being a trusted advisor means. While this article covers various accounting issues that impact authors, much of this content applies to those who work as independent contractors. The expense of hiring a professional accountant is a real obstacle for many.
Simon Winters was featured in a Music Week article. The article is entitled "Cutting corners on your professional advisors is a false economy": Why Accountants Matter More Than Ever to the Biz. Read more here.
Whether you’re an independent artist or signed to a label, you should be receiving some sort of accounting for streams, sales and other kinds of exploitation of your material. Independent artists will get sales reports from their distributor (Tunecore, CD Baby, etc.) while signed artists will receive royalty statements from their record label (for the purpose of this article, all forms of reporting will be referred to as “statements”). But some things fall through the cracks and it never hurts to check.
A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with a friend of mine, a very talented musician who opted for a career in tech. When explaining his choice, he told me “musicians don’t make money like they used to.” What he really meant by that was “nobody buys music anymore, everybody streams music, streaming doesn’t pay enough.” He is right.
There have been some remarkable developments in the UK these last few months not least of which the United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union. This will have absolutely no effect on US entertainers performing in the UK or continental Europe. There will still be visa issues, immigration in and out the UK and British beer will remain warm and heartening.
Written by Roman Katz, Edited by Harold B. Peterson, Jr. It has been more than 50 years since the 1963 Equal Pay Act was signed into law.
In this issue we cover five topics; Tax averaging for artists/composers Central Withholding Agreements in USA
