Bought a $450M painting? In NY, don’t worry about the tax

New York collects sales tax on even the smallest items, but it probably won’t collect a cent on a nearly half-billion dollar painting by Leonardo da Vinci.

The Italian Renaissance artist’s “Salvator Mundi” sold for $450 million during a record-breaking auction at Christie’s last month to a buyer reported to be a Saudi prince.

But unless he decides to hang the work in a Manhattan pied-aterre, or ships it using a certain type of carrier, he’ll likely be spared the roughly $39 million in sales taxes a regular New Yorker would have to pay for buying a work of art at that price at a local poster shop. That’s because the state’s laws are structured so that out-of-town buyers generally don’t get hit with big tax bills. If they did, New York’s status as a global center for art sales might be jeopardized, an expert said.

If the 500-year-old painting of Christ raising a hand in blessing had been bought by someone who planned to keep it in New York, the buyer would be on the hook to pay an 8.875 percent state and local sales tax, which on a $450 million purchase would amount to around $39 million, said Jason Kleinman, a lawyer who advises art collectors on the tax consequences of their purchases. That probably won’t happen if the painting is shipped to the Middle East.

Christie’s declined to identify the buyer but media reports point to the Saudi royal family. The New York Times reported the painting’s anonymous buyer as a little-known Saudi prince, Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud. The Wall Street Journal reported that Bader was actually acting as a proxy for Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Whoever the original purchaser was, the painting now appears headed to the newly opened branch of the Louvre museum in Abu Dhabi. The museum tweeted Friday that the painting had been acquired for the museum by the government’s tourism and culture department.