The UK government says it is streamlining customs processes to boost the domestic art market and simplify the importing of art and antiques in the wake of Brexit. The arts minister Stephen Parkinson said in a 29 January speech that the long-term aim is to create the “world’s most effective border”.
Since Brexit’s official implementation in 2020, art, antiques and most other cultural goods entering Britain from the EU have carried a 5% import VAT and significant red tape. This has devastated cross-border trade: imports to the UK in 2022 were $2.8bn, less than half the level in 2015, the year before the Brexit vote.
Mark Dodgson, the secretary general of the British Antique Dealers’ Association, says that a mechanism called Temporary Admission (TA) currently eliminates import VAT for dealers except “if and when the goods are purchased by a UK-based buyer. If the goods are sold to an overseas buyer and exported, then no VAT is payable”. This is important, he adds, because the UK art market is an international convergence point for buyers and sellers. Taxes and bureaucracy therefore “need to be minimised in order for it to remain competitive”.
But the complexity and laboriousness of the paperwork has meant that, in practice, TA has only been available to the largest dealers and auction houses. Parkinson pledged that the government “will be engaging further with the sector” on ways to simplify the process “in the coming weeks”. He also discussed developing a single trade window, which, according to the government website, allows “users to meet their import, export and transit obligations by submitting information once, and in one place”.
“The government is absolutely right to take these post-Brexit steps, as I thought the whole idea was to make trade easier rather than more complicated,” says Johnny van Haeften, a London-based Old Master dealer. “The Temporary Admission system could certainly be streamlined, but no one has yet explained to me how a single trade window might work.”
Parkinson’s comments follow the December 2023 publication of a summary of customs simplification measures by HMRC (the UK’s revenue and customs agency) and the UK Treasury, along with the opening of a consultation.
An anonymous art adviser notes, however, that “all of these government plans may change if the current Conservative administration loses the general election expected this year”.