The Race for a Tax Break: How Buyers Circumvent ‘Use Taxes’ on Art

By Emma Kleiner

When Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969) by Francis Bacon sold last November in New York for $142.4 million, the art world wondered about the identity of the unnamed buyer and the location of the triptych’s new home. Subsequently, the identity of the triptych’s anonymous buyer was revealed: the buyer was Elaine Wynn, who divorced Las Vegas casino owner Stephen A. Wynn in 2010. Although Ms. Wynn is a resident of Nevada, in December 2013, Three Studies of Lucian Freud made its surprising post-auction debut at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. While the decision to anonymously lend the painting to the Museum may appear surprising at first, the Portland Art Museum regularly attracts recently auctioned items to display in its galleries. The decision for collectors to regularly lend to the Portland Art Museum originates from a reason more basic than the Museum’s location, collection, or galleries – it is based on a tax break.

Although Ms. Wynn has not released the tax plan for Three Studies of Lucian Freud, her tactical decision to show the triptych in Oregon instead of shipping it to her Las Vegas home from Christie’s in New York likely helped her to avoid use taxes in her home state, which, in her case, may have reached $11 million. Use taxes incur when an individual sends home an out-of-state purchase. By shipping recently purchased artwork out of state immediately, the collector avoids the state’s sales tax, but use taxes are in place to make up for that loss. Still, a collector can avoid their home state’s use tax by utilizing a little known loophole. Usually, artwork is subject to a use tax in the state where it arrives after it is shipped from its purchase location, but five states—Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon—do not have a use tax. In contrast, California, which established a use tax in 1935, has a use tax rate of 8.75% and Nevada, which established a use tax in 1955, has a use tax rate of 6.85%.  By the time the artwork arrives in the owner’s home state, it has already been “used” in another state, and thus no use taxes are owed. This clever tactic allows art buyers, who sometimes pay tens of millions for artwork, to relocate the artwork to their private residence tax-free.