Want to be a starving artist? You’ll go a little less hungry if you find your muse in Ireland. In order to incentivize the arts, income earned by writers, composers, visual artists and sculptors from the sale of their works is not taxed, under certain circumstances.
Artists must file a claim with Revenue Commissioners, who determine whether the work is original, creative, and has cultural or artistic merit. It also must fit within the five following categories: books or other forms of writing, plays, musical compositions, paintings or other similar pictures, and sculptures.
Wondering how tax people judge art? Here is a sampling of the criteria:
A work has cultural merit if:
- Its contemplation enhances the quality of individual or social life as a result of its intellectual, spiritual or aesthetic form and content.
A work has artistic merit when:
- Its combined form and content enhances or intensifies the aesthetic apprehension of those who experience or contemplate it.
The maximum exempt is €40,000.
