September 2010

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Arguments that Britain badly needs a system of tax incentives to encourage collectors to give works of art to public collections will be strengthened by the publication this week of the report of the Acceptance in Lieu scheme. Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) allows estates to settle death duties in whole or in part by offering works of art to the nation. The report reveals that in 2007-08 tax liability to the tune of £10.3m was settled in this way, meaning that the country’s collections received works whose total value amounts to £15.2m.

The range and depth of the art that has been acquired through AIL is astonishing. The report rightly emphasises the scheme’s benefit to the country’s historic houses, with art and chattels being acquired for five National Trust houses, ranging from 18th-century silver for Dunham Massey in Cheshire to 20th-century books and paintings at Sissinghurst Castle, Kent. I was particularly struck by the acquisition of a group of paintings for a much less well-known house, 17th-century Kiplin Hall in Yorkshire, owned by a private charitable trust. This group of family portraits and grand-tour trophies (notably Luca Carlevarjis’s Piazza San Marco during Carnival, pictured above) is integral to the house’s history.

Although this year there was no single masterpiece to compare with the acquisition through AIL of Titian’s Venus Andyomene for the National Galleries of Scotland in 2003, there are some great works listed in the report. Among them is Allan Ramsay’s wonderful portrait of David Hume, which has been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, and two Turner watercolours, including an 1828 view of Carisbrooke Castle, which has been allocated to Carisbrooke Castle Museum, becoming the first Turner in a public collection on the Isle of Wight.

So successful is AIL that it seems ever-more absurd that there is no equivalent tax benefit for life-time giving, as the AIL board’s chairman, Jonathan Scott, points out in a trenchant foreword to the new report. There were rumours in advance of the pre-budget statement that the Government was preparing to make an announcement that a new tax break would be introduced to encourage lifetime philanthropy, perhaps on the model of what is already done in France, Ireland and Australia, to name just three countries. But the pre-Budget report simply announced that the subject of charitable giving under Gift Aid was being reviewed, deferring hopes that gifts of works of art might be made equivalent to gifts of money for tax deduction under the Gift Aid scheme.
Will the recession mean that the Government will defer indefinitely the idea of helping national collections with such tax incentives? It seems all too likely. The estate of the late Lord Hastings is offering Vanbrugh’s great house, Seaton Delaval, in Northumberland to the nation under the AIL scheme, for allocation to the National Trust. The decision of the Trust’s fundraisers to omit all reference to AIL in their public appeal for cash for the acquisition – apparently under the impression that the public simply regards it as a tax break for the rich – all too likely sums up the Government’s true feeling about the subject.

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