Even in Spain, gallery owners denounce too high VAT compared to France and Germany: 'It's discrimination'

As in Italy, galleries in Spain report a difficult situation for the art market due to the failure to reduce VAT on artworks. In fact, the Spanish government continues to apply a21 percent VAT rate to the art market, unlike Germany and France, where the VAT applied to art is 7 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively-a significant obstacle that holds back the market and harms the entire cultural ecosystem, involving artists, gallery owners and artisans.

The Governing Council of the Consorcio de Galerías de Arte Contemporáneo had spoken of a “discrimination we suffer in not being able to apply a reduced VAT rate, as other professional distributors in other cultural sectors and galleries in many European countries can,” in conjunction with the opening of ARCO Madrid, the international contemporary art fair held this year from March 5 to 9. “The implementation of VAT on culture,” he had continued, “is an essential step to strengthen the international presence of our artists, increase the competitiveness of galleries and democratize access to contemporary creation.”

That is why it had been announced, for Wednesday, March 5, at 12:30 p.m., the opening day of the fair, a ten-minute blackout of the Spanish galleries present at ARCO 2025: turning off the lights in their booths as a protest action to highlight this discrimination. And so it happened. The goal would be to reach a reduced VAT rate of 10 percent.

However, protest actions by galleries participating in art fairs for the purpose of drawing attention to a situation they consider unfair and absurd were nothing new this 2025: even on the last day of Arte Fiera in Bologna, which was held Feb. 7-9, gallerists had organized a protest, in that case with whistles in their mouths, to demonstrate in the fair pavilions their displeasure against the Italian government’s decision not to reduce the VAT on artworks in Italy, which remains at 22 percent.

“The Italian government - in contrast to neighboring countries and our closest competitors that have important cultural traditions and immediately grasped it, such as France and Germany - has decided to turn its back on the Italian art market,” read a note from ITALICS, a network that brings together more than seventy Italian galleries of’contemporary, modern and ancient art, “showing indifference to its economic value and, even more seriously, to its cultural value, in fact decreeing its death sentence and causing incalculable damage in terms of support for artists and to the cultural relevance of our country on the global scene.”

Even in Spain, gallery owners denounce too high VAT compared to France and Germany: 'It's discrimination'

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