Pop Proves Profitable and Untaxable

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Ireland's top pop stars, including The Corrs, The Cranberries and Ronan Keating, showed healthy profits and cashflows in their companies' most recently filed accounts.
Most of Ireland's pop musicians pay no tax on royalties from the music they write, thanks to the state's exemptions for creative artists.
The Corrs recorded accumulated profits of €384,000, according to recent accounts filed in the Companies Registration Office for their firm, Coppice.
The four Corr siblings -- Jim, Sharon, Caroline and Andrea -- and their manager John Hughes are directors of Coppice. Each owns an equal share in the Dublin company which trades as The Corrs.
The company makes its money from concert performances, merchandising, royalties and management re-charges. It charged a subsidiary company, Coppice International, €343,000 in admin-istration costs for looking after the band's concert tours.
Coppice's accounts show that the company is flush with cash. It had €565,000 in its bank account on March 31 2001 -- though this was down significantly from the previous year's figure of €1.18 million.
Caroline and Andrea Corr's wealth was valued at €10 million by a "rich list" published earlier this year. The Corrs have sold more than 25 million albums worldwide.
Singer Ronan Keating has also recorded profits in recent years. His company, Hipclash Services, had €329,000 in its bank account in August 2000. During the previous year, it made a profit of almost €95,000. His wealth was recently valued at €8 million.
Keating's manager Louis Walsh, whose stable of pop acts include Samantha Mumba and Six, also recorded large profits through his firm, War Management, which was previously called Boyzone.
The company recorded a profit of €263,000 in the year ending November 30, 2000, bringing its accumulated profits to €451,000. Walsh is a director of Tone Deaf Manage-ment with night-club owner John Reynolds, and of Louis Walsh Management, a company which he established in 2000 to handle his pop acts.
Keating and the four former members of Boyzone, whom are no longer recording or touring, are directors of Lunaria, the band's holding company. Lunaria made a profit of €563,400 from royalties and performances in 1999, but only €317 in 2000. Its principal activity was music recording, according to its accounts.
Two subsidiary companies, of which all five Boyzone members are directors, also showed healthy profits. Kasama recorded accumulated profits of almost €55,000 to August 31, 2000 when it had €28,000 in its bank account -- down from €364,000 the previous year.
Greyship, the other Boyzone subsidiary, recorded accumulated profits of €114,500 to August 31, 2000. Accounts for Lunaria show that Keating and Stephen Gately, another member of Boyzone, signed new record contracts in 2000 through their own companies. Keating and Gately have gone solo since Boyzone stopped releasing records.
Gately's company, Drumwhim, made a profit of almost €130,000 to year in August 2000 and had cash of €213,000 in its bank account.
Limerick band The Cranberries recorded operating profits of just over €2 million from a turnover of €10.2 million up to November 30, 2000.
The most recently filed accounts for Curtain Call, the company behind the band fronted by singer Dolores O'Riordan, shows accumulated profits of €2 million. The Cranberries' company had cash of €3.75 million in its account in 2000.
Curtain Call paid its directors -- band members O'Riordan, Fergal Lawlor, Noel Hogan and Michael Hogan -- €540,000 in salaries during the 13 months to November 30, 2000. The company made a profit of €1.33 million during that period. The Cranberries' wealth was recently estimated to be about €47 million.
The wealth of musician Eithne Ni Bhraonáin, better known as Enya, was valued earlier this year at €102 million. Enya, 41, has sold more than 54 million albums, making her the best selling Irish artist in the world. The only Irish company of which she is a director is Aigle Music Company, but it did not trade last year, according to its most recent accounts.
The collective wealth of the four band members of U2 and their manager Paul McGuinness was recently estimated at €663 million. According to Rolling Stone magazine, U2 made $62 million last year, more than any other musical act in the USA.
U2 has sold more than 100 million albums worldwide. The band's wealth is hard to gauge as its income moves through a number of different Irish and international companies, including Not Us, Eventcorp and Thengel.