Urban Art Association

Charity auctions on the other hand, can maybe be used to reduce your liability, but not sure if charitable 'donation' = charity auction

If you can justify it when the tax man calls...as office furniture

But we're talking cheap, not thousands (or hundreds) of pounds of art ;-p

Whether or not you can justify it as a business expense is one thing. But even if you could, I don't think it would work like that. Spending 15k on an 'expense' wouldn't wipe out your additional tax liability, it would reduce your profit from 80k to 65k. So you'd be paying 40% on 22k rather than 37k.



(I am very much not an accountant, so treat this reply with caution!)

Expenses claimed as a business expense have to be wholly, necessarily and exclusively for the purpose of a trade. Unfortunately making an office look nice doesn't fit that criteria. When deciding when an item is allowable a good test is to consider whether another trader in your profession would need and use the item in their trade.

Art can be purchased by companies for investment but no allowance is given against tax unless it is sold at a loss. If the art is used privately HMRC would expect a P11d benefit of 20% of the cost. This would result in a 20/40% personal tax bill on this amount plus a 13.8% class 1a company liability.

The thing is if the piece of art is purchased through the company. It then belongs to the company.

Meaning that if you sold it. The profit/loss would reflect on the company. And capital gains tax would need to be paid.

No CGT on a company. Straight Corporation Tax.

Yeah sorry that's what I meant

As far as i know u would indeed kop for CGT on the gain. But if you own it with partner then u can both use ur annual allowance, think its £11k and ud only be paying tax on £3k gain so not so bad.

Always assuming u declare it !

   Here's a true story.

 Someone I know went to buy some imported goods from a location in the UK. A building with storage. Four seperate ltd companies registered at the same address selling the same imported items and all owned by the same person. The four companies combined turnover is over the VAT threshold. The four companies individual turnover is below the VAT threshold.  Non of the four companies paid any VAT.

What I thought may be good is if you used your limited company to buy art from the EU, you can get it vat free. B2B EU vat rules.

You could just take the art to an EU country. Register an address there and buy it from yourself or any name and take it back to the UK.

Brings new meaning to a slap up meal

Down here if I sold a Banksy at £30k but bought it for £1000 I am supposed to count the profit as income and put it on my tax return
All monies down here except gambling wins are counted as potential taxable income. I have a very good friend how works at the tax dept and guilders me on what I can get away with. Which normally is not much.
Even tho our 3rd highest tax commissioner has just been down as part of a $160million dollar rip from the tax office. ( only in Australia). Why any one would want expensive art at work I just don't know, just hang decent cheap copies problem solved. Interesting thought I wonder if Penquin claimed Harland Millers canvases back on tax as it could be said it is buisness related. Maybe they rode it of as advertising and in the context of Penquin that would seem fair.?