Every check leaves a document. The invoice is your last chance to fix anything.

Buyers usually check a first large purchase in the wrong order. They choose the work, agree the price, and only then ask questions. By then the only tool left is the invoice. An invoice cannot fix a flaw in title, an attribution nobody will stand behind, or a licence nobody applied for.

Published by ArtisDomus, written by Polina Surina.

You can check eight things before any money moves. Each is settled by a document that already exists, or that you can ask the seller to produce.

The first is whether the seller can pass ownership. Under section 17 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, every contract to supply goods includes these terms by law. The trader has the right to sell or transfer the goods at the time ownership is to pass. The goods are free of any charge or encumbrance that was not disclosed to, or known by, the consumer before the contract. They stay free of it until ownership passes. And the consumer will enjoy quiet possession, meaning they can keep the goods undisturbed. This covers an individual buying outside a business. Where the buyer is a company or a family office, the Act does not apply, and another provision does the same work.

The second is whether the object may lawfully be here. The Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003 makes it an offence to deal in a “tainted” cultural object. A cultural object is one of historical, architectural or archaeological interest (s. 2). It is tainted if someone removed or excavated it in circumstances that amount to an offence. The removal can be from a building or structure of historical interest that it was part of, or from a monument. The point that catches people out is in section 2(3). It does not matter whether the removal happened in the United Kingdom or elsewhere, or which country’s law was broken.

For an object entering the European Union, age and value come first. Regulation (EU) 2019/880 bans bringing in the cultural goods listed in Part A of its Annex if they left their country of origin unlawfully. That means goods removed from the country where they were created or discovered, in breach of that country’s laws. Part B covers archaeological objects and parts of dismembered monuments more than 250 years old. They need an import licence at any value. Part C covers rare specimens, historical property, antiquities, ethnological objects, artistic objects, manuscripts and books, when they are more than 200 years old and worth EUR 18,000 or more per item. These Part C goods need an importer statement. The ban has applied since 28 December 2020, and the licence and statement rules since 28 June 2025.

The entry on provenance explains what an ownership history is and what a gap in one means. Title is the narrower question: does the paperwork let the sale happen?

Under section 11 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, a contract to supply goods by description includes a term that the goods will match the description. Subsection (3) covers the gallery case. It is still a sale by description when the goods are on display and the consumer picks from what is shown. Under subsection (4), what the trader says about the main characteristics of the goods becomes a term of the contract. Subsection (5) is the one to remember. A change to that information, before the contract or later, takes effect only if the consumer and the trader expressly agree to it. Subsection (6) sets a different rule at public auction.

So the price list, the wall label, the catalogue entry and the email describing the work all carry legal weight. Keep them, dated, in the version you were shown. If an attribution is quietly downgraded between the viewing and the invoice, that changes information that is already a term.

The certificate is a separate question, and a widely misunderstood one. The entry on the certificate of authenticity explains what such a document binds and what it leaves open. The entry on the catalogue raisonné explains who decides whether a work is included. For a work by a living artist, you ask in a different order, set out in checking a contemporary work is authentic.

At a fair, check who guarantees what. Under Art Basel’s Exhibition Regulations, the exhibitor warrants the authenticity and legal provenance of every artwork it shows, to the fair and to any buyer. TEFAF’s vetting committees examine authenticity, condition and attribution. But TEFAF’s terms disclaim liability for the description, quality, authenticity, attribution, provenance, title and condition of what is sold. Responsibility for selecting, exhibiting, buying and selling stays with the exhibitor selling and the visitor buying. Your contract is with the seller.

A fair’s vetting only decides whether a work may be shown. Once the work is sold, the committee’s decision does not travel with it as a description.

Check four things. A written report exists before the invoice. It carries a date, because condition describes one particular day. It names its author and their relationship to the seller. And the invoice refers to it, so the report becomes information about the main characteristics of the goods.

Write down what the report says and have the seller acknowledge it. Nothing else will do that for you.

Regulation 14 of the Value Added Tax Regulations 1995 sets out what a VAT invoice must contain. A sequential number that uniquely identifies it. The time of supply and the date of issue. The supplier’s name, address and registration number. The customer’s name and address. A description that is enough to identify the goods. The quantity, the VAT rate, the amount payable excluding VAT, the unit price, the gross total, and the total VAT in sterling. And, where a margin scheme applies, a reference to it.

The description matters more than it looks. For a consumer, the words a seller uses to identify the goods on the invoice have already become a term of the contract. An invoice that says only “painting” tells you nothing and binds the seller to nothing.

Then the tax. Section 50A of the Value Added Tax Act 1994 allows a special order for works of art, antiques, collectors’ items and second-hand goods. Under it, VAT is charged on the profit margin alone. This is the margin scheme. A dealer may not show the VAT separately on the invoices it issues for sales under the margin scheme (art. 325, Directive 2006/112/EC). So a margin scheme invoice shows a price and a reference to the scheme, with no VAT line. The buyer cannot recover that VAT, and cannot work out the dealer’s margin from the document. Both follow from the law.

On import, section 21 of the same Act lowers the taxable amount, and the rate stays the same. This applies to works of art, antiques more than one hundred years old and the listed kinds of collectors’ pieces. Their import value is taken as 25 per cent of what it would otherwise be (s. 21(4)). Subsections (6) to (6B) define a work of art more narrowly than the trade does. Casts of a sculpture and tapestries are limited to eight, enamels on copper to eight, and photographs to thirty. Technical drawings, maps, hand-decorated manufactured articles and theatrical scenery are excluded outright.

Ask which basis applies before the invoice is written. The answer changes what the invoice can say. It cannot be reissued on a different basis later to suit a buyer who asked too late.

The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 apply to an art market participant. Regulation 14 defines it. It is a firm or sole practitioner who, by way of business, trades in works of art or acts as an intermediary in their sale or purchase. The transaction, or a series of linked transactions, must be worth £10,000 or more. The same regulation covers the operator of a freeport where works of art of that value are stored for one person or a series of linked persons. It excludes a firm selling a work created by, or attributable to, one of its own members (reg. 14(3)).

Note the words “series of linked transactions”. Three works bought from one gallery on one visit count together. A buyer who splits a purchase to stay under the line has done the one thing that draws attention to the file.

Fairs have their own version. Under Art Basel’s regulations for the Basel show, an exhibitor who receives more than CHF 100,000 in cash takes on special duties of care. They come from the Swiss anti-money-laundering law of 10 October 1997, and include identifying the contracting party and establishing the beneficial owner.

Expect the request before delivery. Expect it to cover the source of funds as well as identity. And if a seller does not ask, that seller is the one to ask questions about.

Under section 11(1) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the author of a work is the first owner of its copyright, subject to the provisions that follow. Under subsection (2), an employer is the first owner of a work an employee makes in the course of employment, unless they agree otherwise. The section has no exception for commissioned work. The artist keeps the copyright. A buyer who plans to photograph the work for a catalogue, a website or a brochure needs a written licence from the artist or the estate.

Export is a separate permission, and it turns on age. The United Kingdom export licence and the artist’s resale right covers the ban, the fifty-year rule, the open licences and the Waverley criteria. It also covers the resale royalty: its bands, its cap, and the rule that it cannot be waived or assigned. The export licence for leaving Belgium does the same for Belgium.

Two dates decide the export question: when the object was made, and how long it has been in the country. Most collection records hold neither. Ask for both while the seller still has a reason to answer.

Under regulation 29 of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, a consumer can cancel a distance or off-premises contract without giving a reason. That is a contract made remotely, or away from the trader’s premises. The consumer can do this at any time in the cancellation period. Separately, a consumer can withdraw an offer before the contract is made. Regulation 30 sets when the period ends. Regulation 28 lists what falls outside all of this. Two of the exclusions are exactly the art cases: contracts made at a public auction, and goods made to the consumer’s specifications or clearly personalised.

So a commission is outside the rules by design, and so is an auction purchase. A purchase made standing in the gallery was never a distance or off-premises contract. For most serious purchases there is no cooling-off period at all. That is why the checks belong before the payment.