Schneiderman said, “We are committed to rooting out tax abuses wherever we find them, especially in the art world, where the difference can be hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of dollars in lost tax revenue.”
According to the attorney general’s office, art dealers are exempt from paying taxes on works that are for resale. If Rosen is signing a resale certificate for artworks he bought, but is using them for his own enjoyment or to bolster his real estate brand by exhibiting the works on his properties then he must pay taxes on them. One such work is Daimen Hirst’s the Virgin Mother, 2005, which can be found at Rosen’s Old Westbury estate on Long Island. The sculpture, which is valued at approximately $2.5 million, is one of 200 works that are involved in the tax dispute. According to Rosen, his contemporary art collection is worth “well over $500 million” and consists of more than 800 works.
Schneiderman believes that “law-abiding New Yorkers should not be stuck footing the bill for those who fail to pay their fair share.” He also announced the findings from a separate tax evasion investigation involving art dealer and director of a New York–based Gagosian Gallery Victoria Gelfand. The attorney's general office concluded that she had not paid taxes on thirty-one different works purchased between 2005 and 2013. The law firm representing her said that she intends to sell the works and that she disagrees with the attorney general’s position that once the art is displayed in one’s home the art dealer should be required to pay taxes. Deirdre A. McEvoy with the law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, said that Gelfand “wanted to do the right thing,” so she paid a $210,000 settlement to the state.
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