Art World
French Court Rejects Plan For Additional Tax on Art
Josh Niland
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There is good news for art dealers in France.
The French Assemblée Nationale voted 18 to 3 last week not to adopt a proposed amendment put forth by the Union des démocrates et indépendant (or UDI), which would make artworks subject to the solidarity tax on wealth, Art Media Agency reports.
The left-of-center UDI party is part of a coalition that has attempted to pass such an amendment since 1988, when the solidarity tax was established.
UDI president Philippe Vigier spoke of the wanton speculation that shapes the art market, which is seen by some experts as the world’s largest unregulated commercial entity. He told AMA: “it is a case of supervising the practices of a speculative market and not at all a question of taxing culture or creativity.”
But the assembly wasn’t convinced. AMA reports that opposition to the amendment fell across a wide political spectrum. Socialists are opposed to it out of fear that private sales will be discouraged and that the market could collapse entirely, the AMA says. The center-right Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP), the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, opposes the new amendment’s intended increase of the solidarity tax. For once, everybody agreed.
