Registered arts or heritage charities can claim back eligible expenditure as unrestricted funds through the Government Museums and Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief (MGETR). These claims can be used to support your core work, to commission and contract staff, or to develop new artistic and curatorial practices.

It will take time, commitment and resources to get ready to claim and there are criteria that your organisation will need to meet, but it’s worth considering, particularly if you already have charitable status.

After a successful campaign, led by CVAN, it was announced in 2021 that the period for claiming MGETR would be extended beyond the original ‘sunset’ clause of March 2021 to 31st March 2024. This ensures continued support for organisations to mount high-quality museum and gallery shows. The headline rates of relief were also temporarily increased from 20% to 45% for non-touring projects, and from 25% to 45% for touring projects.

CVAN will continue to campaign for the permanent adoption of MGETR for the visual arts, to align with tax relief opportunities for other cultural sectors.

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“The scheme is invaluable in providing an additional source of unrestricted funding which we reinvest back into our public-facing work, increasing the benefit to the public from whom the tax is derived.” Modern Art Oxford
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Support for your organisation

CVAN is here to help. Led by our Yorkshire and Humber region (YVAN), we’ve been working with over 100 museum, gallery and artist-led organisations to understand how to claim this tax relief, what the barriers to claim are, and how best to make your organisation ready to claim. 

To help you, we’ve initiated peer-led training with tips and hints from across the sector and have compiled resources and templates all designed to make the process more understandable. We’ve also developed a range of case studies from different types of arts and heritage organisations so that you can read about their experiences, some of which are positive, some not so positive. However, all are very informative. The relief is offered on a UK-wide basis, so we’re currently growing the number of case studies to include Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales as well as exploring the ‘on-the-ground’ benefits of MGETR: why it’s crucial, and where and how the eligibility criteria could, and should, be expanded.