It appears likely that the NSW government will conduct a review of the tax system as it applies to the arts in a new attempt to spark a state’s culture sector struggling with cost-of-living burdens and the lack of affordable space in which to live and/or work.

Among the low hanging fruit is the abolition of taxes on arts and literary awards such as the Archibald Prize. As it stands, prize money donors receive a tax concession while prize winners carry a tax burden. In contrast, the winner of The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards (currently $80,000 in each of its four categories) are specifically exempt from income tax.

According to reports, NSW Arts Minister John Graham plans to hold a one-day Cultural Tax Reform Summit to examine ways in which the tax system can work more equitably for writers and visual and performing artists.

Tax reform was recently named as the top advocacy priority by members of the National Association of Visual Artists (NAVA) which has called for the removal of taxation on prize monies, the harmonising of income averaging arrangements between the Australian Tax Office and Centrelink (averaging smooths out the impact of large irregular earnings over a five-year period), and...