TAX 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”.

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6 COMMENTS

  1. “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.

  2. 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’!

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