A new European directive, which came into force in the UK on 14 February 2006, will, for the first time, give visual artists the right to a percentage of the revenue from the resale of their works in the art market.

This means that, every time your work is resold (for a price of over €1,000) after you have sold it for the first time, you are now entitled to a percentage of the sale proceeds. The right, known as Artists Resale Right (ARR), will be levied on a sliding scale on any works selling for more than €1,000 (a UK Government decision in January 2006 reduced this threshold from €3,000), from between 4% to 0.25% of the selling price (the more the work is resold for, the smaller the percentage) to a maximum of €12,500. The buyer and seller are jointly responsible for the payment of the resale fee, not the artist.

A table of this sliding scale is below:

• From €0 to €50,000 - 4%
• From €50,000.01 to €200,000 - 3%
• From €200,000.01 to €350,000 - 1%
• From €350,000.01 to €500,000 - 0.5%
• Exceeding €500,000 - 0.25% to a maximum of €12,500

When work is bought direct from an artist and then sold within 3 years for less than €10,000, no ARR will be payable. Furthermore, after the death of the artist, ARR will pass to his / her heirs much like copyright, and will last around 70 years after their death. Works resold now by artists who are already dead are exempted from ARR until around 2010.

A full copy of the new law can be found at www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2006/20060346.htm.

For updated information opn the new law, see the Patent Office website at www.patent.gov.uk or www.opsi.gov.uk/SI/si2006/draft/20063820.htm

Nicholas Sharp, art lawyer at law firm Swan Turton and director of a-n The Artists Information Company, has prepared a short note summarising the ARR Regulations which you can view at www.swanturton.co.uk/ebulletins/archive/NXSResaleright.aspx

To collect payments after sales, artists must use one of the official collecting agencies, each of which currently charges 15% of the money collected as a fee:

Designers and Artists Copyright Service (DACS)
DACS are permitted to collect revenues on ARR and distribute them to artists. For more information on how they do this, and an ARR resale calculator, see their website at http://www.dacs.org.uk/index.php?m=7&s=7&c=48.

Artists' Collecting Society (ACS)
17-19 Garway Road, London W2 4PH
Tel: 0845 1122400
Email: mailto:info@ArtistsCollectingSociety.org.uk
Web: www.artistscollectingsociety.org.uk
Following requests from artists represented by the Society of London Art Dealers and the British Art Market Federation, of which RICS is a member, for a choice of collecting society for Artist's Resale Right, the Artists' Collecting Society (ACS) has been established. At the introduction of ARR only DACS was permitted to collect revenues.

Background

In preparation for the introduction of the directive in the UK, which has taken 10 years of negotiation, Arts Council England commissioned research to review the current practice of ARR in other countries. The resulting report 'Implementing Droit de Suite (artists' resale right) in England' by Clare McAndrew and Lorna Dallas-Conte, outlines the operation of the right in five European countries and in California. It also examines how other rights, such as performing rights, currently operate in the UK and explores a number of possible models for implementing Droit de Suite. Seminars to discuss the implementation of the right were held at the Arts Council in March 2002 and at the Patent Office in April. You can order the full report from the Arts Council's publications distributor, Marston Books on tel: 01235 465500, price £10, or download the executive summary from www.artscouncil.org.uk/documents/publications/325.pdf (in PDF format).