Why France’s art sales are in fighting form
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Loading... - Jason Chloros
- 23 Mar 2023
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A tussle over tax; Tefaf back on track; Timothy Taylor goes big in New York — and more
France’s art market activity has soared since Britain’s exit from the EU, reaching a 10-year high of $4.7bn in 2021 — but is now facing what the industry is referring to as its own version of Brexit.
An EU tax directive, quietly passed last year, would — by 2025 at the latest — increase import VAT to 20 per cent on all goods, including art, which currently enjoys a reduced 5.5 per cent rate in France, the lowest in the EU. A margin scheme, where VAT is applied only on profits rather than the total retail price, is also under threat.
Now the market’s lobbying of France’s government has begun in earnest. In early March, nearly 130 artists, including Sophie Calle, Tatiana Trouvé and Xavier Veilhan, signed a comment in Le Monde newspaper, warning that the directive could “dry up creativity and heritage”.
Meanwhile the Comité Professionnel des Galeries d’Art (CPGA), an organisation of 320 galleries, has said that the directive — adopted without industry consultation — “could result in very serious, and probably irreparable, economic damage to France’s art market”. Its statement concludes that the only beneficiaries would be “its main competitors”, named as the US, UK, Hong Kong and Switzerland.
Paris gallerist Franck Prazan says the good news is that France’s authorities “are concerned and listening to us very carefully, they get it” — a sentiment echoed by Clément Delépine, director of the Paris+ par Art Basel fair that was launched last year. Both are part of an informal industry task force that will meet Ministry of Finance officials on March 24. The aim is to settle the situation by the autumn, says Marion Papillon, a gallerist and president of the CPGA.
Tefaf Maastricht seems back on track, to the relief of exhibitors, after three years of managing the pandemic, which shut the fair down midway through in 2020. It also suffered an armed robbery last year. Read More…
