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If you are an Artist based in Ireland, in receipt of the Pilot Artists Scheme and need assistance with registering your business, or with your accounts or taxes, we encourage you to contact our friendly team for assistance. The initial meeting is free of charge. Just contact us by email or telephone and we will reply within one business day.

Introduction

The Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme will run over a three year period (2022 – 2025) and will be open to eligible artists and creative arts sector workers. Eligibility will be based on the definition of the arts as contained in the Arts Act 2003;

““arts” means any creative or interpretative expression (whether traditional or contemporary) in whatever form, and includes, in particular, visual arts, theatre, literature, music, dance, opera, film, circus and architecture, and includes any medium when used for those purposes”.

The overarching objective of the scheme is to address the earnings instability that can be associated with the intermittent, periodic, and often project-based nature of work in the arts. The scheme will research the impact on artists and creative arts workers creative practice of providing the security of a basic income, thereby reducing income precarity.

Rate of payment

Grants to the value of €325 per week will be paid to successful participants.

Payments will be made on a monthly basis.

Tax and social welfare treatment of the payments

Please note:

• these payments will be reckonable for the purposes of income tax. All successful participants will need to register with Revenue as self-employed and pay Schedule D income tax, where appropriate, on the BIA grant payment
• income from the pilot will be liable for Class S PRSI
• the Department of Social Protection (DSP) will treat income from the scheme as income from self-employment for the purpose of its various means tests. This means that where a scheme includes a disregard of a certain amount of income from self-employment, that disregard will be applied to income from the basic income pilot. It should be noted that not all means-tested schemes include disregards for income from self-employment. The extent to which this income will have an impact on a person’s DSP payment will depend on the means test for that scheme and the person’s individual circumstances (in particular whether the person and/or their spouse/partner has other means)
• applicants are strongly advised to investigate what their own particular tax and social welfare situation may be should they receive payment
• those in receipt of a social welfare payment who receive payments from the pilot scheme should advise the Department of Social Protection of this change in their circumstances
• the Department of Social Protection has published a webpage to assist potential applicants to BIA with their concerns which can be found at the below link: Interaction of the Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme with DSP payments
• contact details are available for relevant sections under Heading 5. Potential applicants should contact the relevant section that they are getting their social welfare payment from

Note on payment to BIA recipients

For recipients of the Basic Income for the Arts, it may take some time for payments to begin. As the Basic Income for the Arts is a pilot research project, a number of steps need to be completed before payments can begin. Each of these steps will be impacted by the volume of applications. These include:

– All applications must be checked for eligibility, this may require the department to seek further information from some applicants;

– Once assessed for eligibility all applicants will be entered into a anonymised random sampling process to choose the scheme participants, both the Recipient and Control Groups;

– Eligible applicants who were not selected to receive the payment will be entered into an anonymised random sampling process to choose the “Control Group”;

– Participants in both the Recipient and Control Groups will need to sign a SLA (Service Level Agreement) with the department in order to accept the terms and conditions applying to participation on the BIA Pilot;

– Bank details and evidence of tax clearance will then be sought from participants and these will need to be set up as payees on the department’s payment system. Recipients must have an Irish or SEPA-reachable bank account (not Ulster Bank or KBC Bank as these accounts are due to close). SEPA-reachable bank account information

– A data baselining survey of all participants in both the Recipient and Control Groups will be conducted prior to payments starting to provide the starting point/baseline for the research.

Full information is available at Article Source: gov.ie – Basic Income for the Arts Pilot Scheme: Guidelines (www.gov.ie)