Built for the artists losing money they didn't know they could keep
TourWise exists because withholding tax has been silently taking income from touring musicians for decades — and no one built anything to stop it.
We watched it happen, over and over again
Working within the music industry, we saw it constantly. An artist would finish a successful North American tour — real shows, real audiences, strong fees — and come home with 20–30% of their performance income simply gone. Withheld at source by foreign tax authorities before the money ever hit their account.
The frustrating part wasn't the tax itself. Tax treaties between countries exist precisely to reduce or eliminate this burden for qualifying artists. The money was often legally recoverable. But nobody had told the artists that — or if they had, there was no simple way to act on it.
Managers were guessing at rates. Accountants were charging per-country for advice that should have been standardised. Artists were signing off on contracts without understanding what they'd actually receive. And the reclaim process — where it existed — was buried in government paperwork designed for corporations, not individual touring musicians.
"The treaties were there. The entitlement was there. What was missing was a platform that made it possible to actually use them."
No platform existed for this
We looked. Accounting software didn't cover international withholding for touring income. Tax firms offered bespoke advice that cost more than the reclaim for smaller artists. Spreadsheets got passed around online, some years out of date, with no source checking.
For established artists with big management and legal teams, there were workarounds — expensive, slow, and opaque. For the mid-level touring musician doing 30 shows a year across Europe and the US, there was essentially nothing.
That's the gap TourWise was built to close.
A platform that does what accountants charge thousands to do
TourWise brings together verified treaty rate data across 42 countries, a calculator that gives artists an instant, accurate picture of what they should and shouldn't owe, and a certificate management workflow that keeps compliance organised across an entire touring schedule.
No specialist accountant required for the baseline calculation. No trawling government websites to find the correct treaty rate. No wondering whether the figure your promoter quoted is right.
Every rate in TourWise is manually verified against the underlying treaty. When rates change, we update the platform. When a new country gets added, it goes through the same verification process. We don't publish a number unless we're confident it's correct.
Three things we don't compromise on
Accuracy First
Every treaty rate is verified by hand. We'd rather cover fewer countries correctly than more countries approximately.
No Jargon
Tax compliance shouldn't require a law degree. We explain every number in plain English, every time.
Artists First
Every feature decision starts with one question: does this make life easier for a touring musician? If not, we don't build it.
TourWise is still early — there's a long list of countries, features, and integrations we're working through. But the core principle hasn't changed since we started: touring artists work hard for their income. Withholding tax is a solvable problem. We're here to solve it.
See what you should actually be keeping
Run a free calculation for your next tour date in under 60 seconds. No sign-up required to use the calculator.