Letters and lyrics penned by John Lennon, sculptures by Degas and Barbara Hepworth, and a statue of polar explorer Captain Scott are among nearly £50m of art works donated to the nation over the past year to save their owners tax.
The Arts Council has published this year's annual review of the Acceptance in Lieu scheme, which allows those who have a bill for inheritance tax to offset part of those taxes by donating important cultural, scientific or historic objects to the nation. These are then allocated to public museums and galleries.
A total of £49.4m worth of treasures has been added to public collections including, for the first time, items accepted through the Cultural Gifts Scheme. This enables UK taxpayers to donate important works of art and other heritage objects to be held for the benefit of the public or the nation. In return, donors will receive a tax reduction based on a set percentage of the value of the object they are donating.
The first donor to have assets recognised under this scheme is the author Hunter Davis who has given his John Lennon material to become a permanent part of the British Library collection in order to offset an income tax demand.
Sir Peter Bazalgette, chair Arts Council England, said: 'In 2012/13 the Acceptance in Lieu scheme brought treasures with an unprecedented commercial value into the national collections. If their sale had been on the open market, these works of art might have been lost to us forever: instead, this report details the beautiful and fascinating objects that can now be enjoyed by the public.'
Other items among the 29 treasures left to the nation include paintings by Millais and Rothko, notes made by scientist Charles Darwin when he was ten years old, with are going to Cambridge University Library, and the wood, metal and felt scraps left over from an art 'happening' in the 1960s by artist Raphael Ortiz that saw a piano destroyed with an axe.
The Acceptance in Lieu scheme was created in Lloyd George's 1910 'people's budget', and the value of this year's accepted objects is much higher than that of previous years, up on the £31.3m for 2011/12 and the £8.3m for 2010/11.
One reason is an increase in the threshold of the amount of tax that can be settled, from £20m to £30m. In addition, the Cultural Gifts Scheme introduced in March 2013 allows artefacts to be left within the lifetime of a person.
Culture Minister Ed Vaizey said: 'The Acceptance in Lieu Scheme is a fine example of a win-win-win situation. The owner of the item accepted gets a discount on their tax bill, a museum or gallery gains an important new acquisition for their collection, and the public get a chance to enjoy it free-of-charge, often for the very first time. This year we have had a really fine selection of items accepted and, with the new Cultural Gifts Scheme coming on-stream this year, the promise of even greater things to come.'
