They have raked through business accounts in upmarket ski and beach resorts; they have made spot checks on the owners of high-powered cars and luxury yachts; some have even donned swimwear to root out tax-dodging by the firms that rent umbrellas and loungers to sunbathers along the Italian coast. But it was only on Thursday,Italy’s tax sleuths revealed a new target for their searchlight: art.
The semi-militarised revenue guard, the Guardia di Finanza, said two “noted art galleries” in Rome and the north-eastern city of Padua had been temporarily closed as the result of a sweeping investigation into tax fraud and money laundering in the art world.
It said 24 galleries and auction houses had been targeted with help from the copyright office of Italy’s arts and entertainments industry. The revenue guard said it had succeeded in tracking down more than €2m of unpaid taxes on so-called artists’ resale rights (ARR).
Known in Italian as diritto di seguito, ARR entitles the creator of a work of art to a percentage fee each time it is resold by an auction house, gallery or dealer. The statement did not make clear whether the tax was payable on ARR paid to, or withheld from, the artist or artists in question.
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