Tax on renting out camera gear, and where the £1,000 line is

An ARRI ALEXA 35 is listed in London at £985 a day. The trading allowance, the amount you can earn from hiring out your own equipment before you have to tell HMRC anything at all, is £1,000 a year. Rent that camera out twice and you are over the line.

That is the part nobody mentions. The allowance sounds generous until you measure it in rental days, and on professional kit it is measured in single figures.

Here is the same sum across the kinds of kit people actually list, using rates from live London listings. The right-hand column is the number of hire days that takes you past £1,000 of gross income in a tax year.

Kit	Day rate	Days until you must tell HMRC
ARRI ALEXA 35 kit	£985	2
Sony FX9 kit	£175	6
Blackmagic PYXIS 12K kit	£170	6
Zeiss CP.2 five-way lens set	£150	7
Sony FX6 kit	£138	8
Sony FX3	£120	9
Sony FX3 kit	£96	11
Video tripod	£13	77

Anyone renting a cinema camera with any regularity is past the allowance inside a fortnight of hire days. Only the cheap accessories stay under it for a whole year.

Gross, not profit, and that distinction costs people money

The single most common mistake is reading £1,000 as profit. It is not. HMRC's guidance is specific: "If your annual gross income from these is £1,000 or less, you do not need to tell HMRC". Gross income means everything the rentals brought in, before a penny of costs.

So an owner who took £1,400 in hire fees and spent £500 on insurance and a sensor clean has made £900. They are still over the threshold, because the test is the £1,400.

The allowance does cover this activity explicitly, which is worth knowing because people assume equipment hire sits in some other category. The same HMRC page lists "hiring personal equipment, for example, power tools" among the income it applies to, and HMRC's guidance for people earning through online platforms lists "hiring out equipment" as a service it covers. Renting your camera out is trading income.

Over the line: the choice you then have to make

Cross £1,000 and you must register for Self Assessment, by 5 October in the following tax year. After that you pick one of two ways to work out what you are taxed on, and you cannot have both. HMRC puts it flatly: "You cannot deduct any other expenses or allowances if you claim the allowances."

Three worked examples, at the three sizes this actually happens at.

A Sony FX3 kit, ten days hired at £96. That is £960 gross. Under the allowance, so there is nothing to register and nothing to report. One more hire day would make it £1,056 and change all of it. If you are close to the line in March, the date a booking falls on is worth a thought, because the tax year ends on 5 April.

A Sony FX6, eighteen days at £138. That is £2,484 gross, so Self Assessment it is. Now the choice bites. Claim the £1,000 trading allowance and you are taxed on £1,484, with no need to keep receipts for anything. Or add up what the year actually cost: say £320 of insurance, £180 on a service and sensor clean, £140 of media and consumables. That is £640, which is less than £1,000, so the allowance is the better deal and the simpler one. Take it.

An ALEXA 35, twenty days at £985. That is £19,700 gross, and the £1,000 allowance is now almost an insult. Specialist insurance written for hiring out, servicing on a camera of that value, cases, media, an accountant: the real figure will clear £1,000 comfortably, so you deduct actual costs instead.

The pattern is simple enough to hold in your head. Below roughly £1,000 of annual running costs, take the allowance. Above it, keep records and deduct the real thing. The crossover is not about how much you earned, it is about how much the kit costs you to run.

The trap in that choice

There is a sharper edge to "any other expenses or allowances", and it matters most to exactly the people most tempted by the simple option.

If you bought the equipment, there is normally relief available for the cost of the equipment itself, separately from running costs. Claiming the £1,000 trading allowance gives that up along with everything else. On a camera that cost four or five figures, that can be worth considerably more than the £1,000 you saved yourself the trouble of documenting.

This is the point to stop reading a marketplace's website and speak to an accountant. The arithmetic above is simple; the question of what relief you can claim on a capital purchase, in your particular circumstances, is not, and getting it wrong in either direction is expensive.

Why the "£3,000 tax-free" headlines are wrong

You will have seen that the threshold is going up to £3,000. It is worth being precise about what that does and does not mean, because most of the coverage has not been.

The government announced on 11 March 2025 that the Income Tax Self Assessment reporting threshold for trading income will "increase from £1,000 to £3,000 gross within this parliament", taking around 300,000 people out of filing a return. Of those, it said, "An estimated 90,000 of them will have no tax to pay", and the rest "will be able to pay any tax they owe through a new simple online service".

Read that second half again. It is a reporting threshold, not a tax-free allowance. The trading allowance stays at £1,000. Earn £2,500 from hiring your gear out once the change lands and you will still owe tax on £1,500 of it; you will just pay it through a simpler route than a full tax return. The number of people saying "you can earn £3,000 tax-free" is large and they are wrong.

It is also not in force. HMRC's current guidance on who must send a return still says you must if you "earned more than £1,000 (before taking off anything you can claim tax relief on)", and the new online service is not expected until 2029. For this tax year and the next, plan around £1,000.

What the platform tells HMRC, and why it changes nothing you owe

Since January 2024, UK digital platforms have had to collect seller details and report them to HMRC annually, each January, for the previous calendar year. The information includes your name, address, date of birth, tax identification number and the gross income you earned through the platform.

That rule is about data, not tax. HMRC's own guidance is careful about this: a platform passing on your details "does not automatically mean you owe tax", and separately, "In some cases, you may still need to tell us about your income, even if you do not have to pay any tax on it".

The practical consequence for an owner is just that the two sides are now easy to compare. Your obligation to tell HMRC about income over £1,000 has always existed and is yours, not the platform's, whoever reports what. We show gross earnings in your payouts dashboard so the figure is easy to pull at the end of the year, and that is the extent of it: Picturental does not file anything on your behalf.

None of this is tax advice. It is a plain reading of published HMRC guidance, checked on 3 October 2026, and your circumstances may differ. If the numbers are at all large, or you bought the kit, pay an accountant.

Before any of it applies you need the income in the first place. What a camera actually earns, and how long it takes to pay for itself is the arithmetic that comes first, and what reaches your bank after fees is the figure these thresholds are measured against.

Frequently asked questions

Do I pay tax on renting out my camera in the UK?

Only above the trading allowance. HMRC lets you earn up to £1,000 of gross income a year from hiring out your own equipment without telling them. Above that you must register for Self Assessment by 5 October in the following tax year and will be taxed on the income, less either the £1,000 allowance or your actual costs.

Is the £1,000 trading allowance based on profit or turnover?

Gross income, before any costs. HMRC's wording is "If your annual gross income from these is £1,000 or less, you do not need to tell HMRC". An owner who took £1,400 in hire fees and spent £500 running the kit is over the threshold, even though they made £900.

How many rental days does £1,000 represent?

It depends entirely on the rate. On London listings, an ARRI ALEXA 35 kit at £985 a day reaches it on the second hire day, a Sony FX6 at £138 on the eighth, a Sony FX3 at £120 on the ninth, and a £13-a-day video tripod on the seventy-seventh.

Can I claim the trading allowance and my expenses?

No. HMRC states that "You cannot deduct any other expenses or allowances if you claim the allowances", so you take whichever is worth more. If your annual running costs are under about £1,000 the allowance usually wins; above that, deduct the real costs. Note that the relief you might otherwise claim on the cost of the equipment itself is also given up, which can make the allowance an expensive choice for anyone who bought the kit.

Does the new £3,000 threshold mean I can earn £3,000 tax-free?

No. It is a Self Assessment reporting threshold, not an allowance, and it is not yet in force. The tax-free trading allowance remains £1,000. Once the change lands, people earning between the two figures will still owe tax on the amount above £1,000, paid through a new online service rather than a full tax return.