Music Taxes 101: Mileage, 1099s, and Quarterlies for Gigging Musicians

The venue paid you $400, the streaming service paid you $61.17, and nobody withheld a cent of tax from either. Welcome to self-employment: the tax system assumes you're a business now, and it rewards musicians who keep records like one. (Standard disclaimer, sincerely meant: this is general information, not tax advice — a tax professional who knows your state is worth their fee.)

The income side: it all counts

Gig fees, streaming royalties, merch profit, lesson income, sync checks — all of it is taxable whether or not a form arrives. Platforms and venues may send 1099s; many won't. Your own records are the real ledger, which is why logging every gig's fee and what was actually collected matters beyond just chasing venues that don't pay.

The deduction side: this is where musicians leave money

Business expenses come off your taxable income. The big ones for working players:

• Mileage. Every drive to a gig, rehearsal, or session is deductible at the IRS standard rate — for 2026 that's 72.5¢/mile in the first half of the year and 76¢/mile in the second. A 120-mile round trip to a bar gig is roughly a $90 deduction. Play 60 of those a year and skipping mileage tracking costs you thousands.

• Gear and repairs — instruments, cables, the pedal that died on tour.

• Home studio / practice space — the dedicated-use portion of rent and utilities.

• Software, strings, and services — subscriptions, distribution fees, website costs.

• Travel and lodging on tour, and the business-use share of your phone.

The catch on every one of them: contemporaneous records. "I probably drove 8,000 miles" survives nothing; a per-gig log with dates, venues, and miles survives everything. Musavise tracks miles on each gig and computes the deduction at the correct split-year rates automatically — it's a line item on your gig year summary, not a January reconstruction project.

Quarterlies: the surprise that isn't

Self-employment tax (Social Security + Medicare, ~15.3%) plus income tax comes due as you earn it. Once music income is more than a side trickle, the IRS expects quarterly estimated payments — April, June, September, January. The practical habit: set aside 25–30% of every music check in a separate account the day it lands, and quarterlies become a transfer instead of a crisis.

The one-hour setup

Separate bank account for music money. Every gig logged with fee, expenses, and miles. Receipts photographed the day they happen. That's the whole system — an hour to set up, and it makes April boring, which is the goal.

All of it lives in one free Musavise account — free means free, within honest limits, and your data exports whenever you want it. Create your free account; it takes about two minutes.