Archive of Henry Lydiate‘s Artlaw column, published in Art Monthly since 1976. Have a legal question about your career? Check our Directory or send us a legal query.
Do you any up to date information regarding VAT treatment on commission owed to individual non-VAT registered artists from galleries that may or may not be VAT registered themselves?
The legal and business situation discussed in the 1979 article posted…
VAT minus Zero – no limit
VAT is a pain in the arts. My two recent columns on the subject – Vexing Art Toll? (AM No 24) and VAT Revisited (AM No 29) – have aroused so much interest and…
VAT of confusion
There is much confusion over the new VAT rules due to come into force on January 1st 1993 as part of the European Single Market. Artlaw has been trying to unravel a complex and developing situation with…
Vexing Art Toll?
VAT is an accountancy nightmare but, handled properly, can be turned to good advantage – even for artists. Myths abound; perhaps they can be dispelled. Let’s try. Every artist should ask the following questions: Do I carry…
VAT revisited
Since the Chancellor of the Exchequer doubled the VAT rate to fifteen percent, many artists, administrators and gallery proprietors have raised queries about the tax. Most problems have arisen through a lack of knowledge or from a misunderstanding…
Flavin’s Fittings
In 1928 a US Customs Court in New York ruled that Brancusi’s sculpture Bird in Space, 1923, was a work of art, not an ‘article of utility’, which US Customs had decided it was. US photographer Edward Steichen…