Artists up in arms about plans to increase VAT on cultural events

Many well known personalities from the world of Czech culture gathered on Tuesday to denounce government plans to increase VAT on cultural events from 5 percent to 19 percent. Among them were actresses Jirina Bohdalova and Jirina Jiraskova, actors Rudolf Hrusinsky and Tomas Topfer and the Oscar-nominated director Ondrej Trojan. The venue was provided by the culture minister, Pavel Dostal, who describes the proposed tax hike as "nonsense", and has said he will break cabinet ranks and vote against it.

Artists up in arms about plans to increase VAT on cultural events

Pavel Dostal, Jirina Jiraskova, Rudolf Hrusinsky, photo: CTK

"This VAT increase is nonsense because it won't bring in the kind of the money that the government wants it to. If you do the sums you can see the hike would only bring in around 250 million crowns, which won't have much of an impact on the state budget."

People in the cultural sphere are predicting many job losses, saying many theatres, concert venues and cinemas will simply be forced to close. Ivo Anderle runs an independent cinema in Prague; he says the proposed VAT increase is simply unfair.

"I don't believe that the money that will flow out of culture from ticket sales and other incomes will go back to culture. I think it will be spent on the national debt and things that were not caused by culture. If I was assured, if I knew that the extra money we gave on taxes would come back in different grants and support culture, and initiate new things happening, then I would be more than happy to pay 90 percent tax. But it's not likely to happen, everybody knows that and that's my problem."

Mr Anderle says that the arts in the Czech Republic are already under funded in comparison with most countries in the European Union, where the minimum states spend on culture is one percent.

Tomas Topfer, photo: CTK

"Here it is not even 0.7 percent, so I think from these basic numbers we can see that we are behind the West. We're not talking about socialism or the idea that the state should pay for everything, and we should just have fun because we are the artists. No, that's not true - a lot of people work really hard and deserve grants for that."

The artists who gathered to protest at the tax hike made some strong statements about the dangers it poses to Czech culture. There would, they said, be less money available for domestically produced drama on state broadcaster Czech Television, and that would have a negative impact on the Czech national identity. Cinema manager Ivo Anderle again.

"The truth is that basically right now there is not much money to spend on original Czech TV produced dramas or broadcasts. That's here already, the situation is like that, there is no money to produce new films on Czech TV, which is the biggest film funder in this country. So, we're not talking about the future in this case, we're talking about...it's right here. And there's got to be some changes made right now. I think that's why so many people gathered here today, and the minister came, because everybody feels that we are very close to the red line and we don't want to cross it."