Imogen CalderwoodTAX hikes have forced a Spanish theatre company to take extreme measures.
The Madrid-based company, Primas de Riesgo – or Risk Premium – have begun peddling pornography instead of show tickets to cut their taxes.
Pornography – subject to just 4% tax – is considerably more tax-friendly than live performances, taxed at a massive 21%.
Austerity measures led the PP to drastically cut subsidies for the cultural sector, pushing tax prices on tickets sales from 8% to its current level.
“It’s scandalous when cultural heritage is being taxed at 21% and porn at only 4%,” said the group’s 33-year-old director Karina Garantiva.
“Something is wrong.”
The group now sells back issues of the magazine Gente Libre – Free People – for €16, with a free theatre ticket thrown in.
This campaign is intended to save money on taxes and to ‘start a discussion about this paradox’.
The group has ‘given away’ 180 tickets for its current production of El Magico Prodigioso, a 17th century drama by Pedro Calderon de la Barca.
A Catalan company has used similar tactics, selling carrots – taxed at 4% – for €13 each with a free theatre ticket.
Spain’s finance minister Cristobal Montoro has said that the government is trying to lower cultural tax, adding: “We need to be left alone so we can work. We’re taking it step by step”.
“Pornography is taxed at just 4% compared to 21% cultural tax”
No brain Spain in action again. Who is the minister in charge of culture? An idiot, obviously.
Only in Spain can this happen, nothing shocks me anymore about this country: pornography 4 % theatre 21% truly shameful
“Only in Spain can this happen”. Really? How long ago was it that the UK’s “Lord’s Day Observance” laws allowed shops to sell only perishable foods on Sunday? I can remember a furniture store that would sell potatoes and carrots at 100 pounds/pound, and then throw in a “free” sofa.
Ok poor choice of words, I was referring to how at the moment everything is back to front
Alun, I don’t see what potatoes, carrots and sofa’s have in common with the cultural life of Spain.
What’s Sunday trading laws in the UK got to do with this? I would have thought you’d have been more interested in Sunday trading in California than the UK Lol
So Mark was correct that ‘only in Spain can this happen’!