An award-winning visual artist has won a tax battle with the Revenue Commissioners over a “unique sculpture” that involved a bathtub partially covered by a “moss milkshake”.
The Tax Appeals Commission (TAC) found Sound Bath by Co Waterford-based artist Muireann Nic Cába is “a unique sculpture” that does meet the criteria for qualifying for the tax code’s artists’ exemption.
The exemption allows artists to be exempt from income tax of certain earnings up to €50,000 annually.
Nic Cába presented her Sound Bathwork at the Arts Council-funded Greywood Arts Festival in Co Cork in 2023 for which she received a fee.
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In December 2024, she applied for the artists’ exemption but Revenue refused her application in March 2025. In June she appealed the ruling to the TAC.
Revenue refused Nic Cába’s application as it concluded that the bathtub primarily served a utilitarian function.
At the TAC hearing, a witness for Revenue said: “There’s a cushion in the back and it makes it comfortable to sit and relax in, and it allows public participation, and this would be considered utilitarian.”
Explaining the work to the TAC, Galway native Nic Cába said she sourced a particular type of moss species, sphagnum moss mixed with buttermilk and painted inside the bath to encourage it to adhere to the sides of the metal bathtub and to grow as a “living, breathing organism” with “healing qualities”.
The bathtub was not filled with water and had words written on wood saying “step in, sit back, relax”.
In her findings, appeals commissioner Róisín Jordan said she disagreed with Revenue that the work is a sculpture primarily serving a utilitarian purpose.
Jordan also found that the concept of the work is original and has come from Nic Cába’s own imagination.
Jordan also found that the work meets the “artistic merit” requirements in the guidelines in that the work enhances to a significant degree the canon of work in the relevant area.
Jordan said she can understand how coming across the work in the forest during the festival “would be a memorable event in the minds of the attendees, thought-provoking and perhaps conversation-generating”.
In her formal appeal, Nic Cába said her appeal “is not about seeking a financial advantage but about ensuring that non-traditional and multidisciplinary artistic practices are accurately recognised within the framework of the artist exemption scheme”.
Nic Cába contended that the work “is a multidisciplinary, three-dimensional sculptural installation that integrates sound, performance, nature, community engagement and symbolic materials”.
This story was updated on April 27th, 2026, to correct the name of the festival in question to Greywood.
