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Ploughing through newspaper supplements detailing every possible outcome of the Chancellor?s annual Budget is a challenge that many of us prefer not to face.
Yet one small detail of this year?s Budget should not go unremarked by arts professionals, even if it may not seem immediately relevant.

Gordon Brown has announced that he proposes ?to review the incentives, reliefs and exemptions available to help national and regional museums and galleries make acquisitions of works of art and culture.? In other words, he?s looking at tax-exemption on donations, perhaps based on the long-standing and highly successful US model. Resource, the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, has welcomed the review, hoping to bring their proposals for safeguarding the country?s heritage to the Chancellor?s attention.

This news has been so tucked away in the media that it was easy to miss: but the significance of the move could be huge. Exemptions on donations for art purchases cannot be seen in isolation. Gifts for other artistic purposes must surely be considered too. And after that ? whence VAT on tickets?

Even if incentives or reliefs are proposed, other obstacles to a happy outcome exist. The US culture almost obliges the wealthy, and indeed the merely well-off, to donate to charities, including the arts. Andrew Carnegie?s remark that ?a man who dies rich, dies disgraced? was less an admonition to his fellow citizens than a statement of the American ethos; whereas in Britain, with honourable exceptions, a man would seem obliged to die as rich as he can, and to avoid as much inheritance tax as possible. We do not only require a tax bonus: we require a change of the national mind-set. Arts professionals themselves will have to become major players in effecting that change.

Liz Hill and Brian Whitehead are on holiday.