It is an evergreen topic in the cultural communities whether the tax system is generous enough to financial supporters of culture. The Budapest Observatory has undertaken to collect information about valid legislative rules connected to private and corporate donations for culture. See the cases of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia,uMoldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Yugoslavia. Our project covers only the fiscal aspect of sponsorship: its relationship with tax legislation. At this stage we do not investigate the sociological, economic or marketing aspects: we do not ask about motivations, sponsor-catching tricks etc. Nice or ugly stories, related to cultural sponsorship, will be collected some time later.

This research enabled Péter Inkei, Director of BO, to speak on the issue at the conference "Creative Europe - Culture and Business in the 21^st Century", Innsbruck, November 2001. See Tax Relief for Business Sponsorship and Donations to Culture - Incentive or Reward?

In the survey common methodology has been applied to present the situation in each country. It has been computed what happens to a donation of 1000 units in the local currency. For sake of comparability the cases were simplified as much as possible; for instance by assuming that the natural (physical) or legal (moral) persons in our examples have had no other kinds of tax deduction. For the same reason round figures are used, also in cases like average income, exchange rate of euro etc. The profiles include the relevant extracts from the national laws - in English.

Early findings of our project were presented at the multilateral seminar on Funding and sponsorship of Culture, organised by the Council of Europe within the frames of the Mosaic project, held at Moscenicka Draga, Croatia (Istria) between 2nd and 4th of June, 2000. A completed version was published by the Council of Europe as part of the Mosaic project in 2001.

In accordance with the mission of the Budapest Observatory, we try to include each country in the East-Central European region. A document, prepared by the Commission a couple of years ago, provides interesting insight into this matter in the member states of the European Union. The aim is to create a continuously growing and regularly updated information base. Remarks and proposals are welcome, concerning any part of the project.

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The subject of this inquiry is financial support for culture coming from business corporations and from individuals. The full range of fiscal benefits which the state can grant to culture includes areas like

• taxing donations or sponsorship in nature: goods and services
• reduced, limited or no corporate or profit tax on revenues of non-profit organisations
• reduced, limited or no income tax on grants received from non-profit organisations
• allowances given to the creators as active tax-payers
• value added taxes or similar sales tax and non-profit activites etc.

The Budapest Observatory hopes to cover all of these areas in the foreseeable future.