Explainers

Questions we kept being asked — or kept asking ourselves — answered as stories, with the law cited by section and date. These are the questions we chose to write up: general information about how the rules work, not advice about your situation. Where the law has no published answer, we say so instead of inventing one. Each explainer carries the date we last checked it against the primary sources, because this area of law is moving.

Who owes the super on a gig?

Most of the confusion here comes from mixing up two questions the law asks separately.

Question one: is super owed at all? For most workers, the answer starts with a contract — find it, work out who it's between, decide whether it's employment-shaped. For musicians it doesn't. Section 12(8) of the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 asks one thing: was this person paid to perform? If yes, they're an employee for super purposes — even invoicing with an ABN as a sole trader. The ATO confirmed in writing in June 2026 that this category doesn't depend on a contract existing at all (draft ruling SGR 2026/D1, footnote 17, published 17 June 2026). So "we never signed anything" changes nothing — that door is closed for musicians.

Question two: who owes it? Whoever was liable to make the payment — meaning whoever owed the money, not whoever's bank account it happened to leave (Taxation Ruling TR 2023/4, paragraph 120). And how do you work out who owed the money? You look at the deal — which is usually a contract, written or handshake. So the contract comes back in, not as a condition for super existing, but as the evidence of who's on the hook.

Four gigs show how the two questions land:

Marla's handshake

A landlord tells Marla's trio on the night: "play till close, $400." Nothing written. Question one: paid to perform, so super is owed — the missing paperwork changes nothing. Question two: who owed her the $400? The landlord. The landlord owes the super.

The agent chain

A venue books a band through an agent, and the money physically flows venue → agent → band. Question one: paid to perform, so yes. Question two: who owed the band its fee? The deal was venue-books-this-band; the agent is the pipe the money ran through. The venue is the one liable, so the venue owes the super — even though the payment left the agent's account. "Liable" and "handed over the cash" are different people whenever there's a middleman, and the rule always picks the one who owed the debt. (If instead the agent had booked the band in its own right and sold the show on, the liability — and the super — would sit with the agent.)

The bandleader's lump sum

A venue books Sophie to play Saturday night for $900. Sophie brings Ryan and Amelia along and pays them $200 each out of the $900. The venue only ever dealt with Sophie — it never knew the other two existed.

Count the deals, because there are two.

Deal one is venue-pays-Sophie. The venue owed Sophie $900, and it was a payment to perform — so the venue owes super on the whole $900, paid to Sophie's fund. Not on $500. On $900. The venue doesn't know $400 of it was passed on, and the rule doesn't care: what the venue owed Sophie is what the venue pays super on.

Deal two is Sophie-pays-the-band. Sophie owed Ryan $200 and Amelia $200, and those were payments to perform too — so Sophie owes super on each $200, paid to their funds.

Now look at what happened to the $400 Sophie passed on: it picked up super twice — once inside the venue's $900, and again as Ryan and Amelia's pay. That isn't a slip in the working. It's what the rule does whenever the same money is owed twice, by two different people. The ATO worked this exact gig on its performers page (28 August 2026) and reached exactly this answer.

The way out is to change the deal, not the label. Either the venue engages all three as individuals from the start, or Sophie agrees with the band that she's acting as the group's agent — and tells the venue so. Both ways there's only one deal per player: the venue is the one liable, and it owes each person's super on their own share — Sophie's $500, Ryan's $200, Amelia's $200 — with nothing counted twice.

The kitty band

Four mates, no bandleader, and whatever the door brings in gets split. Nobody owed anybody anything — on a bad night everyone just takes the hit together. With no person liable to make a payment, the rule has nobody to point at — and the ATO's performers page (28 August 2026) now points the same way, treating a share of the takings as something other than a payment to perform (see the door-deal explainer). The practical test: on a bad night, hired players still get their fee; a kitty band all lose together. If your band is on the hired side of that line, someone owes the super.

Checked against primary sources 29 August 2026. Sources: Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 ss 11(1)(d), 12(8); Taxation Ruling TR 2023/4 (¶117–131); draft ruling SGR 2026/D1 (17 June 2026, not yet final); ATO, Super for sportspeople, performers, film makers and related activities (QC 107606, updated 28 August 2026). General information, not advice.

The band takes the door — who owes super on a door deal?

For thirty years this question had a document number attached. ATO determination SGD 93/14 (9 December 1993) said: if the venue collects the door and pays it to the act, "whether in addition to a set fee or not", the venue is the employer — super owed on the whole payment, door share included. If the act charges the entry fee itself and the venue only provides the room, the venue owes nothing, because it was never liable to pay the act.

That determination was withdrawn on 29 March 2006 — and much of the industry never noticed, partly because the copy that circulates is a snapshot PDF with no withdrawal notice on it. For twenty years after the withdrawal there was no published ATO answer on door deals at all — this page said exactly that until August 2026.

On 28 August 2026 the ATO answered it, on its page Super for sportspeople, performers, film makers and related activities, under the heading "Performers sharing revenue" — and it runs the other way to the withdrawn determination. Its worked example: a comedian on tour books a venue; the venue markets the show, collects the ticket sales, deducts its venue hire, equipment and door-staff costs and its agreed percentage, and pays him the balance. The ATO's answer is that the two of them are operating a commercial venture together, so the venue is not paying him to perform — it is passing on his share of the takings — and no super is owed. The page calls these arrangements what the industry calls them: door deals and profit shares.

What it doesn't decide is the mixed deal — a set fee plus a cut of the door. A set fee is a payment to perform and owes super in the ordinary way, and each payment is tested by its substance, not the label the deal wears (TR 2023/4 ¶117). Whether a door share on top of a fee is genuinely a share of the venture, or just how the fee was worked out, is the question the new page leaves open. Two things are unchanged: an act that sells its own tickets while the venue only provides the room was never owed anything by the venue, so the venue owes nothing; and the genuinely shared kitty — nobody hired anybody, everyone splits whatever comes in — now points the same way as the new example, for the same reason (see who owes the super on a gig?).

If your deal lives near the mixed line, that's a question for your accountant or the ATO — not for software, ours included. What Gigsorted does is the arithmetic and the files once you know who's paying.

Checked against primary sources 29 August 2026. Sources: ATO, Super for sportspeople, performers, film makers and related activities (QC 107606, updated 28 August 2026); SGD 93/14 (9 December 1993) and its withdrawal notice SGD 93/14W (29 March 2006), ATO legal database; Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 ss 11(1)(d), 12(8); Taxation Ruling TR 2023/4; draft ruling SGR 2026/D1 (17 June 2026). General information, not advice.

Got a question this section should answer? Send us a message — we write these up when a question keeps coming back, and every answer gets checked against the primary sources before it's published.