ARTSCAPE:TOP SPORTS STARS are great role models for young people, but those dodgy artist types are clearly a a bad influence. There you have it. I'm not sure how exercised, one way or the other, people should get about the Commission on Taxation's proposal to abolish tax relief for artists (but retain them for sports stars), given that so many holes have been picked in the report already.
Following revelations in 2006 that 28 artists earning more than €1 million saved more than €32.5 million in tax, the tax relief was capped at €250,000 per annum. But almost half of those who benefited from the relief (1,366 artists) earned less than €10,000 per annum and cost the State under €1 million.
The Arts Council is coming out fighting, with a rapid response from chairwoman Pat Moylan, urging that the artists’ tax exemption scheme be retained in its entirety.
“As the Diaspora event at Farmleigh will confirm, Ireland has a tremendous opportunity to promote itself in a positive way through our global cultural profile,” she says. “If the exemption was withdrawn . . . there would be pressure on that profile . . . we could lose entirely, or in part, to the art world or other jurisdictions, a considerable number of artists. This would not be for the public good.
“The artists’ exemption scheme is not a rich man’s relief, as has been portrayed in some quarters. The greatest number of its beneficiaries struggle for financial viability on a year-on-year basis. This is true of relatively unknown beneficiaries, as well as certain of Ireland’s most internationally renowned and critically acclaimed artists. Arts Council research has shown that more than half the beneficiaries of the scheme have average earnings of less than half the minimum wage. Of the 2 per cent who are considered high earners, most of whom are in popular music and writing, only one-third of their income qualifies for the relief.”
Arguments well put. Surely, though, it would be honest to acknowledge that there are problems with the tax exemption, and to correct them, because it makes a genuine difference to many artists and thus contributes to our quality of life. Maybe the level of the cap should be looked at. But the most glaring things for anyone looking at the – now public – list of what is tax-exempt are the rules that govern what is considered to be of artistic merit. There needs to be more transparency about these decisions.
Once upon a time it was considered very difficult to qualify for the exemption, which seemed to involve a mysterious judgment process. These days you'd frequently wonder: "How did thatqualify for exemption?" There are "artists" in there whose designation is risible. How is the public good served by autobiographies of overpaid broadcasters, or the songwriting of hugely wealthy pop stars?
The argument is made that they might up and leave if forced to pay tax on all their income, but the greed of the rich few is bringing the whole scheme into disrepute, and accounts for the vast bulk of the cost to the State. Surely, if a rich rock star – or indeed a common tax fugitive, politely called a “tax exile” – wants to live here, they can pay their way like the rest of us.
The builders are in at the RDS. The book-lined concert hall is getting an acoustic makeover in advance of the Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO) moving into the venue for its Dublin concerts. The ICO’s relocation from the National Concert Hall means it will perform in Dublin on Saturdays in a venue it thinks is more appropriate for chamber music.
The RDS concert hall has a long tradition of music, but its bookshelves absorb sound, so AWN Consulting (who worked on the ICO’s Limerick studio, modelled on the acoustics of London’s Wigmore Hall) are improving sound quality, covering the bookshelves with removable timber panels and putting reflectors behind and over the stage.
The ICO comes to town first on September 26th, with conductor Gérard Korsten and Alison Balsom on trumpet (following her Last Night of the Proms performance), between concerts in Limerick's University Concert Hall and City Hall in Cork. Artistic director Anthony Marwood's programme includes world premieres by Dublin-born composer Andrew Hamilton and American Steven Mackey; Handel's Messiahwith the National Chamber Choir; accordionist Dermot Dunne playing Piazzolla and baroque classics; and pianist Leon Fleisher, who famously lost the use of his right hand for 30 years but beat his disability and returned to the stage.
See irishchamberorchestra.com.
Literary festivals abound at home this weekend and next week (Dún Laoghaire's Mountains to Sea Book Festival and the Irish-language Imram event), but Irish writers are in Berlin too. This year's Berlin International Literature Festival is supposed to be focused on the Arab world, writes Derek Scally, but to all intents and purposes it has turned into an Irish literature love-in.
The 11-day festival, which began this week, draws crowds of more than 30,000, and among 130 authors are four leading Irish literary lights: Colm Toíbín, John Banville, Sebastian Barry and Colum McCann. They will have their work cut out for them if they hope to challenge Germany's well-established views of Ireland. Older generations still view Ireland as the land that time forgot, thanks to Heinrich Böll's Irish Journalwhile the younger crowd has fallen victim to the clear and present danger posed by Rosamunde Pilcher. Around 70 of her romance novels have been filmed in Ireland for German TV, frothy affairs which pull in the viewers with big houses and endless shots of cliffs.
For Ireland's literary greats in Berlin, countering the Pilcher pollution will be like tackling a stubborn, greener-than-green grass stain. Toíbín reads tomorrow from Mothers and Sons, hailed by Frankfurter Allgemeineas "splendidly conceived, beautifully written".
John Banville reads on Thursday from The Silver Swan(written under his crime-writing nom de plume, Benjamin Black) and a day later Sebastian Barry arrives in the wake of rave reviews for The Secret Scripture. The influential Deutschlandradio praised the just-released Ein Verborgenes Leben("A Hidden Life"), stating that "if a melodrama can ever be subtle, then it is this story of a crazy old woman".
Rounding out the Irish season is Colum McCann on September 19th, recently praised in Die Weltfor his "penetrating bright eyes and Celtic cheekbones". The excited German journalist interviewing him was just as enthusiastic about the book.
