Via Marginal Revolution via USA Today,

In Mexico, artists can pay their taxes with artwork

Can’t afford to pay your income taxes? Paint a picture instead.

That’s the deal Mexico has offered to artists since 1957, quietly amassing a modern art collection that would make most museum curators swoon. As the 2009 tax deadline approaches, tax collectors are getting ready to receive a whole new crop of masterworks.

“It’s really an amazing concept,” says José San Cristóbal Larrea, director of the program. “We’re helping out artists while building a cultural inheritance for the country.”

There’s a sliding scale: If you sell five artworks in a year, you must give the government one. Sell 21 pieces, the government gets six. A 10-member jury of artists ensures that no one tries to unload junk.

While I cannot speak to any of Mexico’s other tax policies or incentives for artists, I thought this was a very interesting method for artists to provide revenue to the government even if they are not making any revenue at their craft. However, it should be noted the perennial problem artists have generating cash revenue is clearly not addressed by such a policy.

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