Financial Planning for Tattoo Artists

We’re invested in your long-term success. What we do is personal, and we take it personally.

Your financial decisions connect, so we consider the parts of your financial life that are relevant to the advice you need:

• Property & Investing
• Career & Income
• Tax Strategy
• Insurance & Protecting Your Family
• Super & SMSF
• Wealth & Investments
• Life Events & Changes
• Business & Wealth
• Legacy & Future Wealth
• Retirement Planning

This is how we help you make decisions today with your longer-term goals in view.

Everybody’s situation is different, so we listen first, understand what matters to you and explain your options clearly before we make a recommendation.

A studio may have to, depending on your arrangement. If you’re a contractor, the ATO says a business may need to pay your super if it pays you:

• Under a contract mainly for your labour
• For your personal labour and skills, rather than a specified result
• For work that can’t be delegated to someone else

An ABN doesn’t settle it, and a business doesn’t pay super for people employed by a company, trust or partnership it contracts with. An accountant or the ATO can confirm where you stand, and Fair Work notes it can’t decide whether someone is a contractor or an employee. We can then plan your contributions with you.

Your accountant and financial adviser bring different expertise to the same decisions. Your accountant can advise on tax reporting, structures and consequences; we help you plan how cashflow, debt, super, investments and protection work towards your goals. We can coordinate before important decisions.

What an accountant does

• Prepares and lodges tax returns, BAS and financial statements
• Advises on tax structures such as companies, trusts and partnerships
• Manages bookkeeping, payroll and ATO compliance
• Provides tax advice on the consequences of a transaction

What a financial adviser does

• Sets a long term strategy across retirement, investing and cash flow
• Builds wealth from early in a working life, starting with cash flow, a first home and super
• Recommends specific super funds, investments and personal insurance
• Operates under an Australian Financial Services Licence, which is required to give personal advice on financial products
• Handles retirement planning, Centrelink and aged care strategy, and estate planning considerations

Professional roles and authorisations matter. We provide financial advice within our authorisations and work with your accountant for specialist tax advice and lodgements.

Where they work together

• Tax position. Your accountant confirms your marginal rate, deductions and carried forward losses, which shapes decisions on super contributions, investment structures and the timing of asset sales.
• Business and entity structures. Your accountant advises on the structure itself and your financial adviser works within it for investments, insurance and succession planning.
• Cash flow. Your accountant’s figures can help us understand what’s available for debt repayment, protection and longer-term goals.
• Before key decisions. We can coordinate with your accountant on contributions, asset sales and other material choices in time to consider relevant tax consequences.

Fair Work’s summary of the hair and beauty award lists tattoo artists and employees of tattoo parlours as not covered, so that award isn’t the place to start.

Fair Work’s Find my award tool, or the Fair Work Ombudsman, can help you check what applies to you, where the national award system applies. Fair Work also notes that contractors don’t have the same rights and obligations as employees.

Whichever applies, we can plan with you around what you’re paid: your wages, any chair or split income, your super and your goals.

Appointments turn into money as sessions are done and paid for, so we’d plan around the sessions you expect to complete and the amount you can rely on each month. From there, each session’s money can have a place:

• A share for tax, with an accountant estimating the amount
• A buffer for gaps in your book or time away
• Any deposits tracked, with an accountant confirming how they’re treated
• Your goals for home, family and savings

You decide how much goes where, and we can work through the numbers with you.

Licence, registration or notice rules for tattooing differ by state, so check with your regulator or council, and allow for any cost and lead time in your plan. From there, it helps to look at:

• Your household budget, and the savings you’d have left after fit-out and equipment
• A buffer for the first months while your book builds
• Any loan, which a broker can compare and arrange
• Life and TPD amounts against new debts, with the insurer deciding any application

A lawyer can read any lease or sale contract, and an accountant can look at the figures and structure. We can plan the money side with you.

A few sources can play a part, depending on how you work:

• Paid sick leave, if you’re employed and have it available. Moneysmart notes self-employed people don’t get it
• Workers compensation for a work injury, where each state, territory or Commonwealth scheme sets who qualifies
• Income protection, if you hold it, which is generally for illness or injury rather than losing a job, and pays after a waiting period, subject to the policy’s terms and exclusions and the insurer’s assessment
• Savings, for the time in between

We can look at where you stand with you, and plan for the gaps you’d like to fill.

A general insurance broker is the person to explain your studio’s liability insurance and what it does. Our part is personal: what your own income and your household would rely on if you couldn’t tattoo for a while.

That can mean looking at income protection, life, TPD and trauma cover from a wide range of insurers with you, in plain language, beside your super, your savings and the way your work pays you. Any application is the insurer’s to decide.

A first budget, a super fund you can keep track of and a look at insurance are useful places to start. Check your payslips and fund statement for super on paid work. Cover in super generally doesn’t start automatically for a new member under 25, or with a low balance, unless you ask the fund for it or the fund gives automatic cover for a dangerous job.

If part of your training is unpaid, Fair Work’s unpaid work material is the place to read: it says productive work, not done for altruistic purposes, is more likely to make someone an employee. A lawyer can help with your own arrangement, and we can plan with you from there.

Yes. We’d begin with how long you’d like to keep working in a studio and at what pace. Teaching, design or running a studio could be a stage along the way, and so could fewer sessions a week. If you rent a chair, your super contributions are usually yours to plan, unless a business has to pay them, which an accountant or the ATO can confirm.

We’d build the plan on super and savings, with any sale of a studio as an addition. You can read more about our retirement advice.

We’re a national service, so you can meet with us by phone or video from anywhere in Australia. We also have offices in three cities:

• Sydney: offices in Sydney CBD, Parramatta, Seven Hills, Ingleburn and Narellan, servicing areas including the City of Sydney, Eastern Suburbs, Inner West, North Shore, Northern Beaches, Sutherland Shire, Blacktown, Liverpool, Campbelltown and all surrounding suburbs.
• Melbourne: our St Kilda Road office, servicing areas including the City of Melbourne, Port Phillip, Boroondara, Monash, Casey, Wyndham and all surrounding suburbs.
• Brisbane: our Eagle Street office, servicing areas including Brisbane City, Moreton Bay, Ipswich, Logan, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast and all surrounding suburbs.

Yes. An apprentice on a first pay and someone who has run a studio for years can both start here.

There’s no cost for the initial conversation. Any advice after that is a paid service, with its scope and fee agreed with you in writing first.

Recent pay records, a fund statement, any policies and details of a studio loan, if you have one, make a useful starting point.