RCTIs for bandleaders

A recipient created tax invoice, or RCTI, is a tax invoice that the buyer writes instead of the seller. You are the buyer of the player's services, so you prepare the invoice and the player approves it. The ATO's rules for when this is valid are on Tax invoices and in the Recipient Created Tax Invoice Determination 2023.

For an act, this is the difference between a ledger that closes on Monday and one that is still open in March.

When you can issue one

Both of you have to be registered for GST at the time the RCTI is issued. If the player is not registered for GST, an RCTI is not available and you send them a plain invoice with no GST on it instead. That is a very common case with musicians under the registration threshold, and it is fine.

You also need a written agreement with the player that you will issue the invoices and they will not. The agreement can sit in the document itself rather than in a separate contract, which is the arrangement this product uses.

Source: ATO, Tax invoices (QC22438)

What has to be on it

An RCTI has to carry everything a tax invoice carries, plus three things that mark it out as an RCTI:

• Enough information to show the document is intended to be a recipient created tax invoice and not a standard tax invoice.
• Both ABNs, yours and the player's, with both parties registered for GST at the time of issue.
• A statement that the GST is payable by the supplier, which is the player, rather than by you.

The tax invoice details themselves are the ordinary ones: the words tax invoice, the seller's identity and ABN, the date, a description of what was supplied, the GST shown separately, and the buyer's identity or ABN once the sale is $1,000 or more. Draft ruling GSTR 2026/D2 sets the same list out as a checklist.

Source: ATO, Recipient-created tax invoices (NAT 73657, QC19606)

The written agreement, and how approval works

The determination allows the agreement to be embedded in the RCTI itself. The player's acceptance of the document is their acceptance of the agreement, and they have 21 days from receiving it to say they do not accept.

That is why the player approval step in this product matters. You prepare the invoice, the player gets a message with the figures, and they tap approve or request a change. Their approval is the acceptance the determination requires, and it is timestamped and stored. Approved invoices lock so neither of you can quietly change them afterwards.

Source: Recipient Created Tax Invoice Determination 2023 (LI 2023/20)

Where super goes on the document

Super is not part of the invoice total. The player is not supplying you with super; you owe it to their fund. Putting it in the total would overstate what you owe the player and, if they are registered, would push GST onto an amount that never attracted it.

So the super sits in a separate informational block on the document, saying who it is going to and how much, and stating plainly that it is not included in the invoice total.

Numbering and record keeping

Give RCTIs their own sequence, separate from the invoices you send clients, with their own prefix. Numbers are never reused, including for a voided document. That way an accountant can tell at a glance which direction any given document faces.

Keep the approval record with the invoice. If a player's GST registration lapses, the RCTI arrangement stops being available for the invoices issued after that, so ask players to tell you when their registration changes, and check it when you set them up.

GSTR 2026/D2 was still a draft when this guide was written. The wording this product prints comes from the ATO's published form and its plain-English guidance page, both current, so finalising the draft should not change it. We will re-check when it is finalised.

Source: Draft ruling GSTR 2026/D2, recipient created tax invoices