Tax dodge of the week: avoiding the new tax on art

Thinking of selling a piece of art from your collection? Here's how to avoid paying 'droit de suite' - the latest EU tax wheeze to hit the UK...

Emily Hohler
By
published
in Features

If you are about to sell a work of art from your collection, beware the latest EU tax to hit these shores, an art tax known as droit de suite'. The levy will apply to works sold for €1,000 or more and will fund artists' royalties.

Charles Dupplin, head of art at the insurer Hiscox, says "the tax means that 4p out of every £1 raised by the sale of a modestly priced work of art will be confiscated". If you sell a piece of artwork for up to €50,000, you will have to pay the tax at 4%. It is then levied on a sliding scale on works worth up to €2m.

But there are ways to sidestep the tax. It applies only to sales through auction houses, art dealers and galleries. So, if you can arrange a private sale, you do not have to pay the tax.

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Until 2010, this tax also only affects works by living artists. After that, it will apply if the artist has been dead for less than 70 years. Also, if you sell the work less than three years after the original sale by the artist, the tax is not levied if the price is less than €10,000.

Of course, you could always sell your work of art somewhere like New York, where the tax does not apply.

Emily Hohler
Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.

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