The Senate urges the Government to reduce the cultural VAT applicable to artists and art galleries

The Senate Culture Commission this Tuesday unanimously approved a Junts motion by which urges the Government to reduce cultural VAT for artists and galleries, by first transposing Council Directive (EU) 2022/542 of April 5, 2022.

The Junts initiative – which has gone ahead with 19 votes in favor of Junts, PP, Sumar, PNV, Esquerra Republicana and 9 against the PSOE, as well as one abstention – has been approved with a modification of the PP that specifies that the reduction will be studied “the possibility of maintaining the REBU on the sale of works acquired without a reduced VAT.”

Precisely, a few weeks ago the Spanish galleries of the Consortium of Contemporary Art Galleries hung the closed sign, interrupting their activity for several days to protest the “paralysis and lack of response” from the Government on a reduction in the tax for sales of works of artantiques and collectibles, similar to what countries like France, Italy, Germany or Portugal have.

The board of directors of the Consortium – to which nearly 120 galleries belong – announced this decision, which also consisted of ceasing “all free collaboration” with public and private institutions in Spain for a period of three months.

On December 10, both the Consortium and Art Barcelona, ​​Arte Madrid, AGACC Cantabria, AGAS Sevilla, Art Palma Contemporani, CONTEMPORANEA Galicia, LAVAC and more than 1,000 Spanish visual artists read the manifesto ‘Visual Artists Spain sign Cultural VAT NOW’ in which they asked for a reduction in VAT and already warned that galleries are “suffocating.”

In this document, the artists ask the Government to “immediately” transpose the European Directive and to reduce VAT to figures similar to the European environment, which is between 5% and 8%, and they regret that Spain “penalizes” their work with a VAT “100% higher than that applied in other Member States.”