Thank you for supporting me with a free subscription to this newsletter. Please consider upgrading for as little as $6/month or $60/year to show your appreciation for the words I write, and the work done by busk.co.
If you do that, you’ll receive bonus features like “closing my tabs”, available only to paid subscribers — in addition to supporting this community.
Before I start, I want to get one thing out of the way: you should pay all the taxes you legally owe. The question I’m asking here is whether governments should be taxing you, not whether you should commit a crime.
American buskers: the IRS is screwing you over
A few weeks ago I was contacted by Caleb Kruckenberg, a litigator at the Center for Individual Rights.
He said that street performers are paying more taxes than they deserve, thanks to an unlawful decree by the IRS. Would I like to jump on a call to discuss how street performers can join their lawsuit?
I did not, because he’s a horrible man working for legal trolls (more on these hideous people below), but he was, in this instance, making a fair point.
The US Congress passed Public Law 119-21 in July 2025. One of its provisions is that people who work in “occupations which customarily and regularly receive tips” can deduct up to $25,000 per year in qualified tips from federal taxable income.
If you’re an American, you probably heard Trump talking last year about this “no tax on tips” stuff. Well, this is what he was talking about.
When I posted about this before, I was under the impression that buskers would be covered by this deduction, as you obviously meet the criteria of usually receiving tips.
However, in November the Inland Revenue Service (America’s tax collecting agency) decreed that people who don’t qualify for the deduction include:
“Individuals who are self-employed in a Specified Service Trade or Business (SSTB) under Section 199A”
No surprise that the IRS is using confusing terminology. To explain, “SSTBs” are professions, loads of them, one of which is you: those who work in the “Performing Arts: Actors, musicians, singers, entertainers, directors, and similar professionals.”
In short: the IRS’s interpretation of a law—an interpretation that isn’t implied anywhere within the text of that law—means that bartenders now get a $25,000 deduction on tips, for selling an addictive and socially destructive chemical, while street performers do not.
In my last newsletter on the topic, I put out a poll to gauge your thoughts on the matter:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, “No” was the clear winner, with 4 times as many of you saying you shouldn’t pay taxes on your tips (28 vs 7).
At the time, I wasn’t sure where I stood. I’m a lefty person who’s generally quite pro-tax. I think if anything the world is hugely under taxed, especially the top 1% of earners.
Also, I generally disagree with the idea that the money people give you in the street should be classed as “donations”, rather than as tips. Buskers are providing a public service and are rewarded for that service with tips, not with charity, even if the service they provide has so many benefits to the public.
However, as a lefty, I also agree with the logic behind allowing art institutions to be considered “nonprofits”, and, as such, to allow them to avoid paying certain taxes. Governments all over the world agree. And the logic is clear. We should reduce the tax burden for arts organisations because:
They bring people together, creating shared spaces for reflection and identity.
Tax relief lets them subsidise tickets and do outreach programs that prevents culture being only for the wealthy.
They are good for tourism and uplift local businesses
They provide therapy for people, with measurable savings in healthcare and increased productivity in the workplace
They are custodians of traditions that would otherwise disappear
And they have volatile revenues, as the weather, critics, tastes and pandemics interfere
Every single one of those arguments is either met or greatly exceeded by street performers:
Street pitches bring together an audience that’s far more diverse than even the best-subsidised indoor venue, with society’s wealthiest and poorest standing shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone else
Busking also provides benefits for tourism and businesses, and its art therapy reaches people who are too busy or poor to get it anywhere else
Some artistic traditions struggle to find income in any other way than on the street
And buskers are far more susceptible to bad weather than your average venue
If you believe an organisation that’s bringing art to the elderly, the homeless or people with disabilities should be classed as a nonprofit, then you should believe buskers also deserve to be treated that way.
I’d go one step further.
Your average theatre depends on executives, management, administrators, marketers, accountants, designers, donor relations, interns (hopefully paid), HR, utilities, construction costs, web hosting, and all the other services that keep them going.
If these art organisations have official outreach programs to bring in so-called “new audiences”, which tend to be from “underserved” demographics, those programs often require extra employees to manage them.
All of those costs are extraneous to the real goal here: getting artists paid for performing in front of people. And yet a significant amount of what you spend on a theatre ticket or concert is eaten up by these extraneous costs (not to mention the fees charged by 3rd party online ticket sellers).
Busking is different. When you tip a busker, 100% of your tip goes to the artist. 100% of your tip goes to outreach. 100% of your tip goes to impact. 0% of your tip (or near to 0%) is eaten up by other costs.
In light of the above, it’s very difficult to see why street performers shouldn’t be getting tax-deductible tips.
Opposing taxes makes uncomfortable friends
There’s one glaring counter argument here.
Caleb Kruckenberg and Center for Individual Rights (CIR) are, as I said, awful. The former is an anti-government litigation troll (his bio says, “he is relentless when the government is on the other side of his clients’ interests”).
The latter, CIR, has opposed the Voting Rights Act, the bill that helped secure the democratic rights of ethnic minorities. CIR also tried to have union “fair share” fees outlawed (fees that make unions possible), and only failed when a Supreme Court justice that was a literal segregationist, Anton Scalia, died before the final vote (which was split 4:4).
CIR aims to weaken collective protections, erode civil‑rights enforcement, and narrow an interpretation of rights in a way that benefits powerful interests or conservative policy goals.
So, I didn’t email that asshole back. Because even if I think the IRS is screwing over street performers, I wouldn’t be able to hold a productive conversation with someone whose real motivation is the destruction of government, civil rights and worker protections in the service of corporate profits.
I don’t have a neat ending to this email. All I’d say is that I don’t think “tipped workers” deserve a $25,000 tax break in general. If they’re selling a drug or other unhealthy product (trans fats, sugar, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine etc), then even if they’re a really nice person, they’re still just doing a job.
If I were emperor of the world, I’d ban tipping culture (which has been shown to be racist, classist and sexist, as servers from some demographics routinely earn less than others for the same work), increase minimum wage and close tax loopholes for the wealthy, using that extra tax revenue to provide a social safety net that so few tipped workers can afford: healthcare, education for their kids, and so on.
But, we live in this world. So yes, in this world I’d advocate for street performers being added to the list of tipped workers in the USA that get this deduction.
And if you want to join CIR’s lawsuit, google them then give them a call.
Heavy hats,
Nick