When someone purchases a ticket or completes a registration, there are often fees involved — Brushfire platform fees, payment gateway fees, or custom fees you choose to add. Brushfire gives you control over how those fees are handled: you can absorb them yourself or pass them along to your attendees.
Fees and taxes have been redesigned from the ground up. Every fee is now tied to a specific attendee type or add-on — giving you cleaner accounting, more accurate refunds, and much more flexibility over how costs are applied across your event.
What Changed
- Custom fees and taxes can now be set individually per Attendee Type (and per add-on)
- Fees and taxes are separate, ordered categories — you control which applies to which ticket types
- Delivery methods have been removed
- A new Tax Breakdown report (R240) is now available
- Existing fees and taxes have been automatically migrated — no reconfiguration needed
Setting Fees and Taxes on Attendee Types
Inside each Attendee Type, you'll find a new Fees & Taxes tab. This is where you define any custom fees or taxes that apply to that specific ticket type.
Each entry includes:
- A label (e.g., "Sales Tax", "Processing Fee", "Entertainment Tax")
- An optional flat dollar amount
- An optional percentage
You can use both a flat amount and a percentage on the same line item simultaneously, and you can add as many fee or tax rows as needed — there's no limit.
Note: You cannot use "Brushfire" in a fee label. This prevents any confusion between your custom fees and Brushfire's platform fees.
Fees vs. Taxes — Why It Matters
Fees and taxes are calculated in a specific order at checkout. Getting the categorization right ensures your attendees are charged accurately.
| Order | What's Applied |
|---|---|
| 1 | All fee percentages applied to the ticket price |
| 2 | All fee flat amounts added |
| 3 | All tax percentages applied to the ticket price plus all fees |
| 4 | All tax flat amounts added last |
Taxes are calculated on top of fees — which is how real-world tax law typically works. Make sure you're categorizing each line item correctly before publishing your event.
Passing On or Absorbing Brushfire Fees
On each Attendee Type, you can choose whether Brushfire's platform fee is passed on to the attendee or absorbed by your organization. This setting is per Attendee Type, so you can have different configurations for different ticket types within the same event.
For any additional fees beyond Brushfire's platform fee — such as payment gateway costs charged by Stripe or Square — use the Custom Fee option on the Fees & Taxes tab.
Default behavior: Brushfire automatically passes its platform fees to attendees unless you change this setting. If you intend to absorb those fees yourself, update this before your event goes live.
Currency note: Fee pass-along is only available when your event currency is set to USD. If your event uses a non-USD currency, fees cannot be passed along to attendees and will need to be factored into your ticket pricing directly.
Setting Fees & Taxes on Add-Ons
Buyer-level add-ons now support custom fees and taxes the same way Attendee Types do. You have full control over each add-on's tax configuration, independent of your ticket types.
Example: Your general admission tickets carry a 7% sales tax, but your merchandise add-ons do not. You can now configure that precisely without any workaround.
Setting Up Fees During Event Creation
When creating a new event in Event Creator, fees and taxes are configured during the setup wizard:
- Service Fees step: Set your custom fees (flat and/or percentage) with a label
- Taxes step (appears after Attendee Types): Set your tax rows with a label and percentage
Whatever you enter here is applied uniformly to all Attendee Types in the event at creation time.
Important: If you need different fees or taxes on different Attendee Types, start with the event-level setup and then adjust individual Attendee Types afterward from the event dashboard.
Inclusive Taxes
If your event uses inclusive taxes — common for Australian clients or any event where the tax is already built into the displayed price — Brushfire handles the math for you. The fee configuration still lives on the Attendee Type's Fees & Taxes tab, but the price shown to attendees already includes the tax. Nothing is added on top at checkout.
For assigned-seating events with inclusive taxes, a breakdown chart appears at the bottom of the Fees & Taxes tab showing the actual base price and tax amount for every price tier you've configured.
What Attendees See
Attendees won't see a breakdown of every individual fee. They'll see a single Service Fees line and a single Taxes line in their cart. If multiple fee entries contribute to either of those lines, a small info icon will appear next to the line item — clicking it reveals the full breakdown.
The info icon only appears when there's something meaningful to show. If the only fee is Brushfire's platform fee, no icon is displayed.
New Report: R240 Tax Breakdown
A new Tax Breakdown report is available under Detailed Reporting at the organization level. It shows:
- Each named fee and tax collected, grouped by event
- Per-event subtotals
- Grand totals across all events
This report is designed to help you reconcile tax obligations — especially if you operate across multiple tax jurisdictions or have events with different fee configurations.
💡 Pro tip: Use consistent label names across events (e.g., always "Sales Tax" rather than sometimes "Sales Tax" and sometimes "State Sales Tax"). The R240 report groups by label — inconsistent naming creates separate line items instead of rolling up together.
Things to Know
Events with Many Attendee Types
Fees and taxes are configured per Attendee Type. If your event has a large number of types, use the Event Creator wizard to apply a baseline configuration to all types at once during setup — then adjust any outliers from the dashboard afterward.
Existing Events Are Already Migrated
If your event already had a tax rate or fees configured, those have been automatically migrated to the new system. Your historical data and totals are preserved. You don't need to do anything, but you can now edit, add to, or remove entries from the Fees & Taxes tab at any time.
Change Fees Are Now Per-Attendee
Previously, change fees lived at the order level. They're now at the attendee level. When making changes in the admin order interface, you'll see a Change Fee field per attendee rather than a single field for the whole order.
Admin Order Changes Show More Detail
The change order page now shows a full fee and tax breakdown per attendee. You can click into any fee line to see exactly what makes it up, and override a fee inline if needed. Any change fee you want to apply goes on the specific attendee being modified.
Have questions about your specific configuration or need help with a complex fee setup? Contact our support team.