Blog: How museums and galleries could reclaim up to £80k

Kirsty Murray

If your museum or gallery maintains or puts up an exhibition or display, you could be eligible for the Museums and Galleries tax relief (MGTR), writes Scott-Moncrieff director, Kirsty Murray



 

Important new relief for museums and galleries

With last month’s Finance Bill, museums and galleries can now take advantage of the Museum and Galleries tax relief (MGTR).

This allows these organisations to claim tax relief on costs, incurred after 1 April 2017, of maintaining and putting up exhibitions and displays – whether temporary, permanent or touring.

How to assess your eligibility

If you are a museum or gallery, please bear in mind the following criteria to ensure you are eligible to make a claim:

  1. In relation to the production of an exhibition, your company must be a qualifying company which maintains a museum or gallery.
  2. The exhibition, for which relief is being sought, must be a curated public display of an organised collection of objects or works (or of a single object or work) considered to be of scientific, historic, artistic or cultural interest.
  3. Your company will be eligible for relief on certain expenditure on the activities involved in producing, deinstalling and closing the exhibition.
  4. Your company has two years from the end date of the accounting period to make a claim.
  5. The expenditure you claim for must be incurred before 1 April 2022. This date could be extended when the Government reviews the tax relief in 2020 and sets out its plans beyond 2022.
  6. How it impacts you

    Where an exhibiting company is profitable, the MGTR claim reduces the company’s tax liability by up to an additional 15.2 per cent of the qualifying costs.

    Where a company is loss making or does not pay corporation tax, a tax credit at a rate up to 20 per cent of the qualifying costs, capped at £80,000 per exhibition, may be repayable to the exhibiting company.

     

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