By Seán Carabini

Recently, the government announced that it would conduct a review of the Artists Tax Exemption. Nothing, apparently, is off the table – including its abolition. In the media, it is often portrayed as a tax break for the wealthy or for those who have written memoirs about their times in public life. But to abolish the Artists Tax Exemption would be a mistake.

Most countries have schemes to assist cultural endeavours. Such schemes are there to encourage people to work in areas of cultural activity and to keep those activities alive. When it comes to artistic endeavour, Ireland is unique. Internationally, Ireland is known for its writers. Despite our small geographic size and population, we have produced four Nobel Literature Prize winners in addition to literary titans such as Joyce, Trevor, McGahern, Behan … the list goes on. Writing is what we do. It, therefore, stands to reason that we would put supports into the development of the writing culture on this island.

Ireland does not have many supports for artistic endeavours. But it does have the Artist’s Tax Exemption. The exemption allows for artists (accepted by the Revenue Commissioners as qualifying) to earn the first €40,000 from an artistic work with no tax liability in a given year.

However, unlike many occupations, writers and artists often spend years on a project and only earn in the final year. A writer only gets paid for the final draft – no matter how many years were spent writing or creating it.

Ireland, however, has allowed a rather unusual situation to develop. The exemption, introduced to foster artistic endeavour, is on occasion awarded to politicians and other public figures for their memoirs. The public are right to be critical of such uses of the exemption. Its purpose should be to foster and encourage artistic endeavour – not to offer a quick wallet injection to those who are not, by any definition, artists. But to abolish the tax exemption because of such uses would be a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The Irish Copyright Licencing Agency undertook a study of artist’s incomes in 2007. At a time that Ireland was supposedly at the peak of a ‘boom’, it found that 93% of full-time artists earned less than the average wage. Although the exemption is often associated with the very few that have become wealthy from artistic endeavour, the truth is that the vast majority in the field are struggling.

The tax exemption and other artistic supports say something about us as a nation. Are we willing to inject billions into saving banks on one hand but not spend a few million fostering art on the other(the 2013 cost of the Artist’s Tax Exemption was only €6m)? Artists write the stories that help us to come to terms with difficult chapters in our past. They entertain us. They provoke us and make us imagine different futures. The exemption may require reform – but to abolish it would send a very negative signal about the supports we are willing to give to the sector that, more than any other, helps us to define who we are and what we stand for as a country.

(Seán Carabini is the Chairperson of the Irish Writers’ Union – an affiliate of SIPTU).