Private choices and public funding: Financing cultural property transactions through tax expenditures.

摘要

Tax incentives are generally accepted as an important source of funding in several policy areas, including Canadian arts policy. This thesis examines the survival and persistence of a specific program--the income tax treatment of transactions involving certified cultural property--as a means of government support for the arts in Canada. The cultural property tax expenditures operate at two levels, by providing both direct tax expenditures for taxpayers who donate or sell certified cultural property and consequential subsidies for the institutions who receive it. The consequential subsidies could be delivered by other means, but arguments have been advanced in support of the use of tax expenditures as appropriate instruments. Despite an equally compelling case against the use of tax expenditures in this area, they have not been replaced by an alternative non-tax subsidy program. It is suggested that the program's survival depends in part on the dynamics of private interest group activity and also, in part, on "acceptability" factors relating to public perceptions of government institutions (e.g. dissatisfaction with cultural bureaucracies) and government instruments (e.g. tax savings for philanthropic acts may be preferable to grants that are perceived as direct handouts). Although these tax expenditures can be expected to survive, it is noted that in discussions of appropriate policy instruments, the significance of the perceived extent of government influence in funding decisions should not be overemphasized, as different instruments can always be designed to involve as much or as little government involvement--or "control"-as may be deemed appropriate in the circumstances.