Each year hundreds of Australian and New Zealand artists perform overseas. This guide helps navigate the sometimes complex processes surrounding visas, work permits and taxes when preparing to tour internationally.

This guide, published jointy by the Australia Council for the Arts and Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa, focuses on the regions identified by Australian and New Zealand performing arts companies as high priorities:

• Australia and New Zealand

• Asia: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Republic of Korea, Macau, Singapore,  Taiwan

• Europe: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the  Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom

• Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico

• North America: Canada and the United States of America.

Complying with the visa and taxation laws of the countries you visit while on tour requires extensive research, planning and budgeting. Visas and taxation systems vary from one country to another and are subject to constant change.

This guide doesn't aim to provide a complete list of all the visa and tax regulations currently in force. Such a document would be very long, technical and soon out-of-date. Instead, it gives a snapshot of current regulations to provide a starting point for research you must do each time you tour overseas.

The guide provides links to sources of information, some written for the cultural sector and other more general websites. It also includes case studies that feature ways in which arts companies and producers actually operate and some of the problems they encounter.

Download guide