Expenses and tax for musicians and performing artists

Yes. Performing income often arrives both ways: a payslip from a venue or a production, an invoice for a session. Each transaction is categorised as it lands, so the ABN side stays separated from the PAYG side and the business picture is readable on its own. AI2Fin helps you find and organise potential deductions; always confirm what applies to you with your accountant or tax authority.

Coaching, lessons and training that maintain or improve the skills your current performing work relies on are commonly claimable; study that moves you into a different field generally is not. These costs are surfaced from your spending so you can review them. AI2Fin helps you find and organise potential deductions; always confirm what applies to you with your accountant or tax authority.

It depends which side you are on. As an employee the $300 test is applied per item: at or under it you can generally claim in full that year, above it the cost runs over the instrument’s effective life. The per-item test has limits that catch musicians in particular — an item forming part of a set costing more than $300, or one of several near-identical items bought in the same year adding up past it (a matched pair of monitors, a run of the same microphone), is claimed over its effective life instead. On an ABN the $300 test does not apply — the instrument is a business asset. Which schedule it then follows depends on the depreciation rules your business uses and the limits in force that year; AI2Fin works in effective lives, on prime cost or diminishing value, and shows the current write-off limit as something to confirm rather than a number to rely on. Either way only the work-related share is deductible if you also play it for yourself, and the register carries the full decline and your share separately. AI2Fin helps you find and organise potential deductions; always confirm what applies to you with your accountant or tax authority.

Costumes and the specific makeup a performance calls for are commonly claimable. Ordinary clothing generally is not, even when you only ever wear it to gigs. AI2Fin helps you find and organise potential deductions; always confirm what applies to you with your accountant or tax authority.

The performing artists and musicians guide under Tax deductions sets out each category — what usually counts, what usually does not, and the records worth keeping. It is linked from the guides section on this page.