Nevada's Live Entertainment Tax

According to an article, Nevada imposes a live entertainment tax on admission charges, food, beverages, and merchandise purchased at an event featuring live entertainment.

While this tax includes multiple variations depending on entertainment and occupancy, the baseline effective October 1, 2015 is a 9% of the admission charge to a facility that provides live entertainment with a minimum occupancy of 200; or 9% of the charge, expressed in money, for the live entertainment.

"If music or vocals by one or more professional or amateur musicians or vocalists perform, you can expect to have the live entertainment tax applied to your bill" which, in this case, would be 10%.

However, to make things more confusing, if the music "does not routinely rise to the volume that interferes with casual conversation would not generally cause patrons to watch as well as listen or if the music consists of un-advertised occasional performances by employees who are not primarily entertainers, or if the restaurant is in a licensed gaming establishment and the bandstand is located in a licensed gaming area, the tax is also inapplicable as long as the performers stroll continuously throughout the facility if the establishment has a gaming license or move constantly through the audience if it doesn’t."

But wait, there's more.

"If the venue has a maximum occupancy of 7,500 or more, the tax rate drops to 5 percent and only applies to admissions charges, not to other purchases like food, beverages, and merchandise."

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