Guidance

Money laundering supervision for art market participants

Find out if you’re an art market participant and need to register with HMRC under the money laundering regulations.

Who should register

You have to register with HMRC if your business operates as an art market participant under the money laundering regulations.

An art market participant under the money laundering regulations is a company or sole practitioner who is either:

  • ‘by way of business’ trading in, or acts as an intermediary in, the buying or selling of works of art where the transaction value (or a series of linked transactions) is 10,000 euros or more
  • the operator of a freeport storing works of art in the freeport and the value for a person (or a series of linked persons) is 10,000 euros or more

If you have questions about ‘by way of business’, contact HMRC.

A freeport is a warehouse or storage facility within an area chosen by HM Treasury as a special area for customs purpose. This is in line with section 100A(1) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979.

‘Work of art’ has the same meaning as in section 21 of the Value Added Tax Act 1994.

When to register

You must register with HMRC if you meet the criteria. You’ll be able to pay your registration fees at the same time.

Annual supervision

At the end of each registration period we’ll send you a notice inviting you to update your registration and pay the annual fee on all your listed premises. If you do not need your registration to continue then you should log in to your online account and update your registration.

If you do not pay the correct fee then we may cancel your registration and remove your business from the anti-money laundering register.

Get more information

You can find more information about how to agree to the conditions under the money laundering regulations and other related legislation in the art market participants guidance for money laundering supervision.

It covers:

  • what you must do to protect against the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing
  • how to report suspicious activity

You can also watch recorded webinars to find out more about money laundering supervision.

Published 7 February 2020
Last updated 31 October 2022 + show all updates
  1. Updated the 'annual supervision' section because 'annual renewal' has been renamed to 'annual supervision' and 'renewing your registration' has been renamed to 'updating your registration'.

  2. First published.