Ireland's Artist Tax Exemption Scheme retained

Ireland is in deep economic trouble right now and today the government published it's Four Year Plan for Recovery and thankfully the Artist's Tax Exemption scheme has survived the cuts, albeit up to a reduced level. So the artists' exemption from Income Tax is now to be restricted to the first €40,000 in earnings.

Credit is due to the Minister for Arts, Mary Hanafin, for recognising the importance of the scheme as a critical support for visual artists who are trying to make a living from their art, and ensuring that the scheme remains intact.

By slashing the income threshold from €125k to €40k the scheme has now become what it should always have been, a helping hand to artists struggling to live off a low income in a precarious business and not a means for tax avoidance by others lucky enough to make six figure annual earnings from their work.

The retention of the scheme will prove even more important in the coming years as other proposed measures in the four year plan will have a direct negative impact on the Irish art market, and the ability of artists to sell their work in Ireland. These include the increase in VAT to 23%, the €5m cut in arts funding in 2011, and most seriously the reduced spending power of the domestic market as a result of the new levies and tax increases that are proposed.

But just as it demonstrates that the scheme is an important support for artists (at minimal cost to the exchequer with the newly reduced income threshold) it also sends a signal to others looking in that Ireland still recognises how important it's aritsts are to the cultural as well as the economic health of the country. And that they are deserving of some level of support.

So thanks Minister for ensuring we at least have a chance of getting through the next couple of years.