Painting's compliance line is lead. Disturb pre-1970 paint in a way that makes dust and you need the lead-safe unit — and a self-employed painter is a PCBU with duties to identify and control it. Add the year-two tax sting and the channel-by-channel rate differences, and here is the year-one reality.
Lead-safe — the certification line
The credential is CPCCPD3031 "Work safely with lead-painted surfaces" (with CPCCWHS2001 as a prerequisite — a separate unit from the White Card), covering preparing, stripping and encapsulating lead-painted surfaces. The trigger: pre-1970 Australian housing is "assume lead until proved otherwise" (older decorative and primer paints, especially exterior trim, windows and doors). Work that crosses the line: dry scraping, sanding or burning back old coatings, mechanical sanding or grinding old paint, wet-abrasive blasting older exteriors, or any reno generating dust from painted surfaces. As a business — even a one-person band — you are a PCBU with duties to identify and control lead hazards, and state WHS regulators enforce notification, health monitoring and safe systems where exposure is possible. The framing: a home-handyman brush-over is one thing; professional mechanical prep or a full repaint of an older house is where the certification line is crossed.
Starter kit
Painting is a relatively low-capital start, but look professional, not bargain-basement:
- Hand and prep tools (filling knives, scrapers, caulking guns, sanding blocks) — several hundred dollars.
- Quality brushes and rollers (synthetic and natural bristle, 2-3 frames, trays, covers) — a few hundred (avoid the bottom end).
- Masking and protection (tapes, plastic, drop sheets) — a few hundred.
- Ladders (trade step plus a single-storey extension) — several hundred.
- Dust and safety — P2 respirators and cartridges, goggles, gloves (mandated for dusty, lead-risk and fume work).
An HVLP spray rig is a step-up, not a first-month purchase (low thousands new) — defer it or buy second-hand and build a spray offer later. Brush-and-roller only is mid-thousands; with ladders and entry spray, several thousand. See Tooling Up.
Rates, income and the tax sting
Indicative 2025: ~$300-800/painter/day (regional and new entrants lower; capital-city, skilled and specialty higher). A standard 3-bed internal repaint is several painter-days; a single room about a day's labour plus materials; an exterior single-storey repaint runs to a few thousand. An employed painter on a full book earns around the mid-$50ks; a first-year sole trader usually earns less (ramp-up, under-quoting, acquisition costs). The tax sting: with no PAYG instalments in year one, you lodge the first return, cop a tax bill, and the ATO sets year-2 instalments — so year 2 is hit by current-year tax and catch-up instalments together. Register for GST over $75k, and note the ATO publishes painting-services small-business benchmarks (income-to-expense ratios) — so the invoices look big, but benchmark ratios plus delayed tax and GST mean a nasty surprise if you treat everything in the account as yours (see The Money Reality and Setting Your Charge-Out Rate).
Where the work comes from — and the rate trade-off
Each channel pays differently:
- Online lead platforms (hipages and similar) — common early for resi repaints, but lead fees and tight competition push prices to the lower end with price-first quoting.
- Builders and subcontracting — repeat work on new builds and refurbs, but at trade-wholesale rates (lower effective day-rate) with steadier hours.
- Strata and body-corporate — won by tender or relationship, favouring WHS, insurances and lead/asbestos awareness; solid mid-range but lumpy and slow-paying.
- Commercial maintenance — via facilities-management contractors; high effective day-rate but heavy safety and insurance demands, so you usually enter as a subbie at reduced rates in year one.
The arc: start on directories and builder crumbs, then migrate toward repeat direct-to-owner work and better-paying strata and commercial as your compliance, before-and-after photos and word-of-mouth stack up (see Building Your Reputation).
Common mistakes
- Mechanically prepping pre-1970 paint without the lead-safe unit or lead-safe methods.
- Spending everything in the account, then getting hit by year-2 tax plus instalments.
- Under-quoting on platform jobs to win price-first work.
- Skimping on the P2 respirator and dust control on lead-risk jobs.
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