Free 22 minute masterclass for art collectors
You Spent Years Choosing Every Single Work. Almost Nobody Plans What Happens When One of Them Leaves.
Twenty two minutes on the four levers that decide what a collection is really worth after tax. The same framework works on collections of every size, from a handful of works to a few hundred. No prior tax knowledge assumed.
The One Belief Costing Collectors Money
You think the tax question starts when you sell. It started the day you bought.
Basis, classification and documentation are all created at acquisition. By the time a work goes to auction or to an institution, the record either exists or it does not, and no appraiser, dealer or preparer can build it after the fact.
The good news is that opening the file takes about ten minutes per work, and it is the same ten minutes whether the work cost four figures or seven. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
What You'll Discover Inside
Three things your collection has been keeping from you.
The File Nobody Opened
Basis is not what you paid. It is what you can prove you paid. The invoice, the buyer's premium, shipping, import duties and qualifying conservation work can all count, and each one needs a document behind it. Inside the training: exactly what belongs in the file, and how long it takes.
The Door Nobody Shows You
Almost every collector believes selling is the only way to get money out of a work. It is the most expensive door in the room and it is not the only one. Inside the training: how the lending market around documented collections actually works, and what it asks of you.
The Sentence That Decides Your Deduction
When a work goes to an institution, the size of your deduction has almost nothing to do with your generosity. It turns on one sentence in the acceptance letter. Inside the training: the rule, the paperwork, and the window that closes before the return does.
The 4 Lever Framework
Four levers. Most collectors are using none of them.
Two lower the tax bill. One creates cash flow without selling anything. One protects the works for the people who come after you. The framework is the same whatever the size of the collection.
The basis lever
Reconstruct and document what you actually paid, so you are taxed on the gain instead of on the whole sale price. Inside the training: how to open a file for a work bought decades ago.
The liquidity lever
Borrow against a documented collection instead of selling. The work stays on the wall, it keeps appreciating, and no sale means no sale side gain.
The charitable lever
The related use rule decides whether you may deduct fair market value or only what you paid. It comes down to what the receiving organization actually does with the work.
The legacy lever
The step up at death, ownership structure that is real rather than decorative, and a liquidity plan so an estate bill gets paid with cash instead of with the works your family wanted to keep.
All four broken down in 22 minutes. Free.
Proof, Not Promises (Anonymized)
A family inherited a collection. Nothing had to be sold.
A collector died holding works built up over thirty years. The estate held very little cash, and the estate tax return and payment were due in a matter of months.
No inventory existed. No date of death appraisals had been commissioned. Everything was titled personally. The executor believed the only option was a rushed consignment.
Built the inventory and commissioned the appraisals that establish the stepped up basis, then used a non possessory facility against a handful of works to fund the payment in cash.
The deadline was met and not one work was sold. Stepped up basis is now documented across the whole collection, so the heirs inherit with the record properly supported.
Anonymized and illustrative. Outcomes depend on the size of the estate, applicable exemptions, appraisal support and lender terms, and individual results vary.
What This Actually Protects
This is not about tax. It is about the works.
The next acquisition
Tax that never left the collection is the next work. One well structured exit can fund the piece you have been circling, without selling anything you love.
Your cash flow
A documented collection turns a wall into a credit line. The work stays exactly where it is, and you stop being asset rich and cash poor.
The institution
A properly structured gift puts your name on a wall, keeps the work in public view, and is deducted on the right basis rather than the wrong one.
Your family
A documented collection passes cleanly. An undocumented one becomes a scramble and a forced sale at whatever price the market happens to give that season.
Licensed. Credentialed. Accountable.
Who is walking you through this.
Busayo Ogunsanya, CPA, MST is the Managing Partner of BigApple CPA Tax & Advisory, where he leads private tax strategy for collectors, business owners and professionals.
- Over twenty years as a licensed CPA
- Fordham University, M.S. in Professional Taxation
- Author of eight published tax books
- Featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Crain's New York Business
You chose every work deliberately. Choose what happens to them the same way.
Here is everything waiting on the other side of the form:
- The full 22 minute masterclass, streamed instantly
- The four lever framework, in plain language
- What belongs in a basis file, work by work
- The related use rule and the window that closes first
Worst case, 22 minutes confirms your collection is documented and you sleep better tonight. Best case, you find something nobody has ever pointed out to you. Both beat not knowing.
Show Me the Four Levers →Free. Instant. A qualified appraisal cannot be commissioned retroactively, and that window closes well before the return does.