Museums and Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief 

To be qualifying, both the company and exhibition will need to meet some conditions. 

 

Company Eligibility:

The company must be either the primary or secondary exhibition company, dependent on if the exhibition will be displayed at more than one venue. The company must:

• be liable* to UK corporation tax;

• be responsible for producing and running an exhibition at a venue;

• where the exhibition is at the venue for a limited time, is responsible for deinstalling and closing the exhibition at the venue;

• be actively engaged in decision-making in relation to the exhibition

• **make an effective creative, technical or artistic contribution to the exhibition; and

• directly negotiate for, contracts for and pay for rights, goods and services in relation to the exhibition.

 

*Must be a charitable company which maintains a museum or gallery, wholly owned by a charity which maintains a museum or gallery, or wholly owned by a local authority which maintains a museum or gallery.

**This condition is only applicable to the primary exhibition company.
 

Exhibition:

To qualify, the exhibition must:

• be curated 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;

• from the planning stage, the exhibition is intended to be open to the general in that it does not need to charge admission; and

• at least 25% of the core expenditure must be European Economic Area (EEA) expenditure.

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Exhibitions which do not qualify include:

• the main purpose, or one of its main purposes, is to sell anything displayed or to advertise or promote any goods or services,

• it is organised in connection with a competition of any kind,

• it includes a live performance** by any person,

• anything displayed is for sale, or

• anything displayed is alive.

 

**unless the live performance is incidental to, or forms a merely incidental part of, the collection displayed.
 

Qualifying Expenditure:

The all-important spend that can be enhanced is core expenditure as:

• producing, deinstalling and closing the exhibition

• storage costs for some touring exhibitions

 

Core expenditure does not include costs relating ordinary running costs of the exhibition, infrastructure costs not incurred solely for the new exhibition, purchase of exhibits or non-production activities such as financing, marketing, legal services or storage.