How to make a mint from corporate art

1. Set up a large canvas and daub paint on it for five minutes. Give your artwork a portentous name and put it on sale at an online auction house under a pseudonym.

2. Approach company A and offer to reduce its tax bill in return for 20 percent of the savings. Set up offshore company B in a no-tax jurisdiction on its behalf.

3. Get company A to buy your artwork for £50,000 as part of its portfolio of investments.

4. Six months later, get offshore company B to buy the artwork from company A for £10,000. Company A can now claim the £40,000 loss against its taxes.

5. Set up 20 large canvases and daub paint on them for five minutes. Give your artworks portentous names and
put them on sale at an online auction house.

6. Repeat steps 2-4 for company A and other organisations. Collect your 20 percent commissions from each of them, as well as the secret money from the sales.

7. As other buyers register the corporate interest in your art, they will begin bidding for it at auction, driving up the value. Offshore company B should sell its stock of your work at a big profit.

8. Set up 100 large canvases, daub paint on them for five minutes and sell them at a retrospective show.

9. You are now rich.  Rent an inhospitable Welsh castle and invite celebrities to be filmed living there eating goats’ eyeballs, liquidised cow uterus and assorted live insects. Do not televise the results.

Posted on Tuesday, July 9th, 2024 - Categories: #40 - Jul-Sep 2020, App Issues.