Published: Wednesday, 13th January, 2010 5:00pm

Ahern's book means it's time to revisit artists' tax scheme

by Tadhg Carey

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There is now a crying need to re-examine the Artists' Exemption Scheme following news last week that former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern will not be liable for tax for earnings from his recently-published autobiography.

Mr Ahern is amongst 69 new additions to the list of tax-free artists, including 33 other writers, 18 painters, five playwrights and script writers, three musicians, three installation artists, three photographers, two sculptors and one illustrator.

The scheme was originally introduced by Charlie Haughey and applies to earnings from a book or other writing, a play, a musical composition, a painting or sculpture.

However, there have been growing concerns that the scheme, like many tax shelters, favours the wealthy.

Figures for 2006 showed that 28 of the country's artists who had incomes over €1 million saved a total of more than €32.5 million.

But some 1,366 artists, almost half the total of those who benefited from the scheme in that year, were earning less than €10,000 a year and the tax lost to the State as a result of their claims was less than €1 million.

An amendment to the scheme in 2007 capped earnings at a maximum of €250,000 per annum after which tax is payable. A lesser threshold of €125,000 was imposed in last December's budget.

Bertie Ahern is not the only politician to have availed of the scheme, Ruairi Quinn's "Straight Left: A Journey In Politics" was also deemed eligible a number of years ago.

Interestingly, the inclusion of Ahern indicates that Revenue deems his tax affairs to be in order as those receiving payments of €6,500 or more within a twelve-month period from a government or public body are required to have a tax clearance certificate in order to apply for the artists' tax relief.

It'll be interesting to see what the Mahon Tribunal, the final report of which is still due, has to say about all this.