Your money

The venue is taking 12% out of your fee. Here is what the law actually says.

Since July, a lot of musicians have opened a remittance advice and found their usual number had shrunk. The short answer is that the venue may be entitled to do that, or may owe you the difference, and which one it is depends entirely on a conversation most people never had.

There are two questions here, and everyone runs them together

The first question is who the law makes responsible for superannuation. That one has a clear answer. Under section 12(8) of the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992, if you are paid to perform, you are treated as an employee of whoever is liable to pay you, and the super guarantee is calculated at 12 per cent of what they pay you. It is an amount on top, computed from your fee. It is not a slice of your fee.

The second question is what your fee is. And the law has almost nothing to say about that, because your fee is a price, and prices are what two parties agree. Nothing in the super rules stops a venue from deciding that the most it can spend on a Friday night is $500 all up, super included.

That distinction is worth holding onto in the conversation, because most bookers are not being sharp with you. They have been told that super is now payable, they have no budget for it, and they have reached for the only lever they have. Whether they were allowed to pull it after the deal was struck is a fair thing to raise, politely, on the night.

The arithmetic, both ways

First, the mistake to avoid. Extracting super from a super inclusive amount is a division, not a subtraction. Take $500 and knock off 12 per cent and you get $440 and $60 of super, which is wrong. The correct working is $500 ÷ 1.12 × 0.12, giving $53.57 of super on a fee of $446.43. Getting this wrong in the venue's favour is a surprisingly common error.

All figures exclude GST. Super is worked out on the GST exclusive fee, so a $330 invoice made up of $300 plus $30 GST attracts $36, not $39.60.

Read the last column as what the argument is worth. For a player doing two pub gigs a week at $300, the difference between the two structures is about $3,300 a year in cash. Not a rounding error, and worth one slightly awkward email.

You are not actually worse off. You are less liquid.

Worth saying, because it is the part that gets lost. Under the super inclusive version, you are not down $53.57. You are down $53.57 in the bank and up $53.57 in your super, minus the 15 per cent contributions tax the fund pays on the way in.

That is a real loss of cash today and a real gain in a preserved asset you cannot touch for decades. If you are 24 and covering rent from gig to gig, that trade is genuinely bad for you right now. If you are 45 with nothing in super, it is arguably the best thing that has happened to your retirement. Both positions are honest, and it is worth deciding which one you are in before you pick a fight about it.

What to actually say

Three situations, and what tends to work in each.

Before the gig, quoting fresh

Put it in the quote as a line rather than a discussion. "Fee $500 plus superannuation of $60. Total cost to you $560, of which $60 goes to my fund." A booker who cannot wear $560 will tell you, and then you are negotiating a price like adults instead of discovering a deduction six weeks later.

An existing residency, where they have moved the number

"I understand the super has to be paid and I'm not asking you to break the rules. But we agreed $500 for the night, and $500 was the fee, not the fee plus my super. Can we either keep the fee at $500 with super on top from here, or agree a new number properly rather than back-solving it?" It puts the choice where it belongs, which is on the budget, and it keeps you easy to work with.

They have paid you short for a gig already played

Ask for the remittance in writing and check the split adds up. If they have taken $60 out of $500 rather than $53.57, they have used the wrong formula and you can raise that on its own, which is a much easier conversation than a principle. Then ask for the difference against the agreed fee.

What the industry bodies are saying

The MEAA's position is that pushing super into existing fees is a pay cut dressed as compliance. Its chief executive Erin Madeley has said the union is hearing reports of businesses looking for new ways to avoid the entitlement rather than fixing decades of non-payment, and its survey of musician members this year found 59 per cent still were not receiving super at all.

The venue side of the argument is not made up either. The Australian Live Music Business Council has been collecting reports of small rooms facing dozens of hours a week of new administration, and is asking for a $5,000 threshold for sole trader performers. A 22 year old musician told the ALMBC's Kylie Thompson that he had "just lost 12 per cent of all my gigs".

Both of those can be true. The immediate practical answer for you is the same either way: be explicit about your number, and be explicit about whether super sits inside it or on top.

If the super simply never arrives

Different problem, and a more serious one. If a venue has paid you your full fee and put nothing into your fund, they have a super guarantee shortfall, and since 1 July it had to be in your fund within seven business days of them paying you.

1. Give it a few weeks. Contributions take days to appear, and funds are not fast.
2. Check your fund's app or myGov rather than asking the venue first.
3. Ask the venue once, in writing, for the date paid and the fund it went to.
4. If there is still nothing, lodge an unpaid super enquiry with the ATO. You will need your invoices, the dates you were paid, and the payer's ABN. Keeping those is the whole reason to invoice properly.

Reporting a venue is not a small thing in a scene where everyone knows everyone, and nobody can make that call for you. What you can do cheaply is keep the records, so the option stays open.

Quote it once, in writing, and stop having this argument

GigFee puts the fee, the GST and the superannuation on the invoice as separate lines, so there is no room to read your number two different ways. Your ABN is checked as you type and the PDF goes straight from your phone. Free to use, no account, no card.