Michael Fox writes a letter to the Australian Financial Review suggesting that the Australian government is letting a prime opportunity to regulate the local art market lapse. The resale royalties program has never caught on in Australia. Dealers find it an imposition of tiresome paperwork. But Fox suggests raising the threshold on which sales are reported to the royalty scheme would relieve the pressure of paperwork and alert the government to larger transactions:

For just as the federal government is watering down the finance advisory laws, it is also allowing the art market integrity measures implicit in the resale royalty scheme – where artists receive a payment if their work is sold by others – to either die a natural death or be repealed.

No new funds were allocated to the resale royalty scheme in this year’s budget. […] But there is definitely a case for retention of the scheme if the threshold was lifted to the same level as for the reporting of cash transactions to AUSTRAC.

A threshold of $10,000 would mean only valuable art trades are reported. It would also create a disincentive for the peddling of dubious art works.

Art resale royalties laws dealt harsh hand (Australian Financial Review)