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Berghain granted ‘high culture’ status
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 13 September 2016
While authorities in London gleefully shut down Fabric last week, over in Berlin the city’s most famous nightclub, Berghain, has been granted ‘high culture’ status. If only for tax purposes.
According to Der Spiegel, Berghain has successfully ended a two and a half year dispute with the local tax office over the rate of tax it should pay. The club previously paid the 7% rate set for cultural institutions, but then Berlin’s finance ministry decided to reclassify nightclubs under the entertainment category with a 19% tax rate, in doing so demanding millions in back taxes. The club fought the reclassification through the courts though, leading to an interesting debate about what, exactly, constitutes ‘culture’.
According to The Guardian, tax officials argued that a club was not comparable with a concert hall, because there was no stage, no beginning or end, and no round of applause, and people mainly went into the venue to get high on drink, drugs and music. But a report commissioned by Berghain insisted that most people attended the club primarily for the music on offer, arguing that a DJ was comparable to a conductor. Meanwhile the venue’s lawyer contended that concertgoers may achieve a similar intoxicating effect from a Mahler symphony as clubbers do from a DJ set.
The venue ultimately won the argument, securing itself ‘culture’ status and therefore the lower tax rate. That said – even though the judges reached their conclusion based on Berghain’s core clubbing programme, and not because of the other more conventionally cultural events it now often hosts midweek – the court also noted the ruling was specific to this venue and did not set a city-wide precedent.
