Tax Breaks For UK Venues?

With his move to regulate UK scalpers seemingly on the backburner until it can win more support from the House Of Lords, Tory MP Mike Weatherley is now championing another music biz cause.

Tory MP

The former intellectual property adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron has written to Tory chancellor George Osborne MP to request the introduction of tax breaks for small and medium-sized live music venues.

A week ago Music Venue Trust chief exec Mark Davyd complained that the UK’s smaller venues are in a “perilous and precarious state.”

“There is a national challenge to our live music venue circuit brought about by a sequence of events and developments,” he said. Weatherley’s letter pointed out that its becoming harder for smaller live music venues to be financially viable and, as a result, the number of venues is decreasing.

“There is precedence of successful tax breaks for bands playing overseas and in other areas of entertainment (theatre/opera, for example, who also enjoy tax breaks and financial incentives), but not for the small and medium sized live music venues, which are the bedrock of all creative music talent,” his letter explained.