NSW wants all ‘reasonable ideas’ on ditching taxes for artists

The NSW government will convene a tax summit focused on the arts and creative industries, with an emphasis on abolishing taxes on arts and literary awards including the Archibald Prize.

Arts minister John Graham will weigh in on long-running calls from visual artists and authors to reconsider the way Australia taxes prize money in a speech to be given to the Committee for Sydney on Thursday.

Graham will cite discrepancies in the tax treatment of the $100,000 Archibald Prize – the nation’s best-known prize for portraiture, which is held by the Art Gallery of NSW annually – versus those who escape the taxman after plunging money on its outcome.

2024 Archibald Prize winner Laura Jones with her portrait of writer Tim Winton. Credit: Janie Barrett

All past Archibald Prize winners including Julia Gutman, Blak Douglas and Laura Jones paid tax on their winnings as part of their ordinary income.

“We currently have a situation where the winners of government-funded arts prizes have to pay tax on that prizemoney,” Graham says in an extract of his speech obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald.

“So that means the Archibald Prize winner has to pay tax on their prizemoney, while someone who makes a bet on the Archibald doesn’t have to pay tax on their winnings.”

Graham will announce NSW’s plans to host a one-day Cultural Tax Reform Summit to hear all “reasonable ideas” on tax reform that affect the creative industries and take their findings to the federal government.

“We promised a ‘whole of government’ approach to arts policy, and nothing says ‘whole of government’ like putting a bunch of our best treasury boffins in a room with our state’s best creatives,” he will say.

The push for tax reform comes a year to the day Graham unveiled the government’s strategic blueprint for unlocking the full potential of the creative arts and industries sector.

Two years before, as opposition arts spokesman, Graham announced his election policy to shift tourism focus of Destination NSW to experiential and cultural activities.

Graham will concede the current economic climate meant significant additional funding for the sector wasn’t “a reality any time soon”.

“So the next big lever we need to pull is tax.”

Julia Gutman wins the 2023 Archibald Prize with her work Head in the sky, feet on the ground.Credit: Wolter Peeters

Tax reform was recently named as the top advocacy priority by members of the National Association of Visual Artists. Three-quarters of artists and arts workers indicated growing frustration about the financial strain caused by current tax policies.

Under current legislation, an artist “in business” must include all income related to their art practice in their assessable income, which includes grants and prizes. Artistic grants and fellowships are also subject to income tax.

Tax averaging can help mitigate some of this burden by smoothing out the impact of large irregular earnings over a five-year period.

But navigating these provisions often requires costly tax advice, which artists cannot afford. The average total income of the country’s 47,500 professional artists is $54,500, 26 per cent below the workforce average.

If, in the year, the artist earns only $100,000 from the Archibald win, they could lose $22,000 straight up, according to the ATO’s simple tax calculator. If, for example, they earn the average $54,500, with the win, they could pay $42,000 in tax for the year.

At the same time, Live Performance Australia has been lobbying for tax incentives for commercial live music and theatre productions. Britain has been enjoying a boom since introducing in 2014 its Theatre Tax Relief program where producers of ballets, operas, musicals and circuses get a tax rebate that equates to 45 per cent of the costs of staging new work.

“It’s encouraging investment in new work, rather than subsidising the fixed costs of running a theatre,” Graham will say.

“And they’re seeing such a big boost that the increased investment in theatre is four times greater than the foregone tax revenue.”

Sydney Theatre Company executive director Anne Dunn has said tax incentives would help transform the Sydney and Melbourne theatre industry into “the West End of the Asia Pacific”.

“There is no doubt that Sydney has the talent and artistry to compete on the global stage but we face economic hurdles when it comes to development – it is simply expensive to make theatre here,” she said. “Australian producers can’t compete with the theatre tax initiatives offered in the UK, USA and Europe and this impacts both the volume and scale of new work we can produce.”

The summit would also consider a proposal from APRA AMCOS, the national rights management organisation for songwriters and publishers, for a tax rebate for live music.

A live music venue could get a tax rebate of anywhere between 5 per cent to 20 per cent of their eligible live music spending.

“Like the 80 per cent discount on licensing fees and extended trading hours we now offer venues hosting live music in NSW, the aim would be to help music venues stay afloat and encourage investment in new live stages and venues, and thereby creating thousands more gigs around the state and putting more money into the pockets of musicians,” Graham will say.

“The idea of the summit will be about taking a package of tax reforms to the federal government prior to their review of the Revive arts policy.”

Submissions are expected to be called ahead of the summit.

A spokesperson for Tony Burke declined to comment.

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