The Statute of the Artist has taken a new step forward this Thursday with the approval, by the Congress of Deputies, of the reform of the rule that regulates personal income tax in relation to irregular income of artists.
This is one of the key measures of the Artist Statute promoted by the Ministry of Culture, demanded by the cultural sector as an important step on the path towards more fair and equitable tax treatment for the group of artists and cultural workers. .
As reported by Culture in a note, the purpose of this reform that complies with one of the agreements of the report on the Statute of the Artist, approved unanimously in Congress in 2018, is to adapt the regulations that regulate the determination of the net income of a person who is dedicated to artistic or cultural activity to the characteristics of said activity.
The circumstance that justifies this specific tax treatment is that the income from cultural work does not correspond to the specific moment of the public presentation of a cultural event.
Beyond when the specific interpretation, execution or creation occurs, there is a necessary and essential period of time to achieve or complete the interpretation, execution or creation of said work. “This intermittency represents, therefore, an irregularity in the frequency of their income,” indicates the Ministry of Culture.
Currently, given that artists’ income is not distributed regularly over time, they suffer a fiscal effect of higher taxation produced when this fluctuation of income is integrated with a progressive rate, in works, usually by projects, whose duration exceeds the anus.
With the new reform, a mechanism is established that corrects this effect, through a reduction in the personal income tax burden corresponding to the year in which these higher remunerations must be integrated at specific times.
Specifically, a 30 percent reduction is introduced in the income from work or economic activities obtained by artists when such income exceeds by 130 percent the average of the income obtained in the last three years.
TAXATION
In the fiscal field, the objective of the Artist Statute is to modernize and update the taxation of artists, performers, creators and cultural workers, making clear two inalienable objectives.
The first is the fiscal responsibility that all citizens have the obligation to assume by contributing to the support of the State in a solidarity, proportional and fair way to their income. And the second, the right to be treated fiscally in a reasonable, fair and equitable manner taking into account the irregularity of their income, derived from the intermittent nature of cultural work.
The measure is part of the Government’s legislative agenda, which prioritizes social progress in terms of rights, obligations and opportunities, with the aim of translating into effective legislative changes that transform reality, which the Artist Statute is transferring to the scope of the culture.