Wednesday, November 26, 2003
So yesterday I got all my stuff together to claim the Artists Exemption on my book. This means I won’t have to pay tax on the income from it – no complaints here about that. My accountant was delighted when I told him I was writing a book – ‘It’s great,’ he said. ‘A legal way to avoid paying tax.’ And he doesn’t even have to be creative.
There’s a good chance that the amount I make will be so little that even with the day job, I wouldn’t be liable for tax anyway, but I was thinking positively as I filled in the forms.
Under the regulations, the books has to contain artistic or cultural merit, and the Revenue Commissioners reserve the right to have someone judge that for them – there’s a job I’d like see advertised.
For a non-fiction book like mine, there are some extra requirements. Textbooks or books that help you do your job don’t count, nor do most collections of journalism, but other things are fine: literary criticism, autbiography, and the vague ‘heritage value’ clause.
The book should fall into any number of categories, but we’ll see what the Revenue think.