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# Spain's Art-for-Taxes Program Only Works When the Art's Good
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/spains-art-for-taxes-program-only-works-when-the-arts-good/
- Published: 2015-01-26T16:54:51.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:00:08.000Z
- Description: If taxes sound taxing to you, consider this alternative: move to Spain, purchase valuable and culturally significant artworks, and donate them to the Spanish government in lieu of tax. Just make sure they're really significant artworks.
- Author: Becca Rothfeld
- Tags: In Brief, Francisco de Goya, Museo del Prado, Spain, Taxes, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:08 (2014, 2015, part 2)

![Johannes Vermeer, "Woman Holding a Balance" (detail) (c. 1664) (via Wikimedia Commons)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/01/vermeer-scales-taxes-detail.jpg)

Johannes Vermeer, “Woman Holding a Balance” (detail) (c. 1664) (via Wikimedia Commons)

If taxes sound taxing to you, consider this alternative: move to Spain, purchase valuable and culturally significant artworks, and donate them to the Spanish government in lieu of tax. Just make sure they’re *really* significant artworks.

That’s what many prominent Spanish banks and corporations have been doing for years. The bank Caja Madrid got out of over $4 million in taxes by donating four works by Francisco de Goya to the Museo del Prado between 2002 and 2003, and in 2005 the urban infrastructure company Ferrovial donated a painting by John of Flanders worth around $8 million, *The Art Newspaper* [reports](http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Spain-says-art-submitted-in-lieu-of-tax-last-year-not-good-enough/36837?ref=hyperallergic.com).

However, in the past year there has been a marked decline in the efficacy of this art-for-taxes scheme. Much to the chagrin of the Spanish corporate elite, none of the artworks on the table made the cut: they were all deemed too historically insignificant.

But don’t despair, Spanish financiers: if your government’s tastes continue to prove too aesthetically conservative, you can always move to [a number](https://hyperallergic.com/tax-tips-for-artists/) of other countries including France, the UK, and India that accept art donations as tax payments.