Claiming Museums and Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief for Corporation Tax

Watch a video about how Creativecreative Industryindustry Taxtax reliefs work.

What are Creativecreative Industryindustry Taxtax Reliefsreliefs and how do they work?

Who can claim

Museums and Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief is available for qualifying primary and secondary production companies that put on a qualifying exhibition.

Qualifying companies

A qualifying company needs to maintain a museum or gallery and be either a:

• charitable company
• company wholly owned by a charity or local authority

Primary production company

A primary production company must:

• make an effective creative, technical or artistic contribution
• be actively engaged in planning and decision-making
• directly negotiate, contract and pay for rights, goods and services
• be responsible for producing and running the exhibition at a venue

There can only be one primary production company for an exhibition.

If the exhibition is held at 2 or more venues, there may be secondary production companies.

Secondary production companies

A secondary production company must be:

• responsible for producing and running the exhibition at a venue
• actively engaged in decision-making in relation to that venue

There may be more than one secondary production company in relation to an exhibition.

Check if your company qualifies as the production company before claiming the relief.

Check if the exhibition qualifies for the tax relief

A qualifying exhibition:

• is a curated public display of an organised collection of objects or works considered to be of interest in one of the following ways:
  • scientifically
  • historically
  • artistically
  • culturally
• can be a single object
• has at least 25% of core costs spent on goods or services that are provided from within the UK or the EU, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein known as the European Economic Area (EEA) — from 1 April 2024, at least 10% of the ‘core costs’ must relate to activities in the UK

Core costs are those spent on:

• producing the exhibition
• uninstalling and closing the exhibition if it’s open for one year or less

Your company cannot claim the relief for exhibitions:

• which are organised in connection with a competition
• which are not held in person, for example, online exhibitions
• which include a live performance by any person, except where this is incidental
• where anything displayed is:
  • for sale
  • alive

You can check if the exhibition qualifies for the relief.

What you can claim

You can claim an additional deduction to reduce your profits or to increase a loss. This will reduce the amount of any Corporation Tax you will need to pay.

The additional deduction will be the lower of either:

• 80% of total core costs
• the amount of core costs on goods or services that are provided from the UK or EEA — from 1 April 2024, it is the amount of core costs relating to activities in the UK

If you make a loss, some or all of this loss can be surrendered for a payable tax credit.

Losses are surrendered at a rate of 45%40% for non-touring exhibitions, with a higher rate of 50%45% available for touring exhibitions.

The current rates are a temporary uplift. The standard rates are 20% for non-touring and 25% for touring exhibitions.

Touring exhibitions

A touring exhibition must meet these additional requirements:

• the exhibition must be held at more than one venue
• at least 25% of the objects or works displayed at the first venue must be displayed at every subsequent venue
• there should be no more than 6 months between uninstalling at one venue and installation at the next venue
• there must be a primary production company for the exhibition, which is within the charge to Corporation Tax
• the primary production company must intend from the planning stage that the exhibition will be touring

When you can claim

You may make, amend or withdraw a claim for Museums and Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief up to one year after the company’s filing date.

For accounting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2024, you may make, amend or withdraw a claim for Museums and Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief up to 2 years after the end of the period of account the claim relates to.

HMRC may agree to accept late claims in some circumstances.

How to claim

Watch a video about how to claim Creativecreative Industryindustry Taxtax relief.

How to make a claim for Creativecreative Industriesindustries Taxtax Reliefrelief.

Claim the tax relief on your Company Tax Return.

You will need to calculate the amount of:

• additional deduction due to your company
• any payable credit due

From 1 April 2024, all claims must be accompanied by an additional information form. You must use this form to submit the necessary evidence to support your claim.

For each production you must provide:

• the title and start date of the production
• statements of the amount of core expenditure, split between:
  • UK or EEA
  • non-UK or non-EEA
• a breakdown of expenditure by category

Get more information

You can find more information, including examples of how the relief is calculated, in the Museums and Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief Manual.