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UK Govt To Reject Games Industry Tax Breaks – Report
The UK government is expected to reject the idea of introducing tax relief for the domestic games industry.
Chancellor Alistair Darling’s pre-budget report will not include measures aimed at providing tax relief for the sector, according to a Guardian report.
The news will come as a massive blow to the industry, which contributes more to the UK economy than the government-aided film industry.
In July, as part of its Digital Britain report, the government “committed to work with the industry to collect and review the evidence for a tax relief to promote the sustainable production for online or physical sale of culturally British video games”, noting that any potential support would have to be balanced “with the need for fair competition and ensure value for money for taxpayers”.
UK developer trade association TIGA, which delivered a tax relief petition to 10 Downing Street earlier this week, has predicted that the development sector will decline by 25 per cent within five years unless tax breaks are introduced.
A change in administration could now prove to be the industry’s best hopes of securing such relief, with shadow culture minister Ed Vaizey having stated that he is "actively considering" a tax break for the industry.
Earlier this week it was confirmed that the UK games industry would receive a £10 million cash injection from the government, with significant investment to be pumped into centres of excellence in Dundee and Manchester.
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
Voodoo economics is precisely that. Investing in a industry that requires highly educated professionals is not going to help spur job growth on the mass scale a recession needs. If anything, it'll just pad their profit margins in the short term. There's no guarantee they'll reinvest the breaks into new job hires. It is typically the case that they don't. It's not like this is a manufacturing industry.
For three decades, Britain had the third largest videogames industry in the world, behind the United States and Japan. But tax incentives in other countries have seen that ranking slip in recent years and by some estimates the UK is now fourth or fifth, behind Canada and South Korea, with France also gaining strongly. The Guardian.
Gordon Brown's government do NOT want success for the country - FACT.
This is just what you get when you have a spineless government with no vision, no creativity and no imagination running the country.
Please vote accordingly.
Since when did tax breaks equate to a successful country? Are any of the opposition parties seriously tabling this?
Given the current economic climate, I really think a new tax break is off the radar.
The idea of the tax break was to
A) attract new investment into the U.K games industry. A bi-product being an increase in jobs.
B)Secure current investment
Without it, at best, we can hope to keep current investment.
What is most likely is more investment will be made in other countries, decreasing market revenue and increasing un-employment for people possesing these skills.
So with a tax break the country gets a smaller percentage of a much larger pot. As well as less people unemployed, who pay tax and NI, and buy more so more VAT. This cycles money through into other industries and starts the economy moving again.
Without a break you get a larger percentage of a small pot which is passed onto people on the doll and swallowed up into nothingness until the industry eventually dies, i.e the Labour way.
Giving a tax break to a proven industry is how to get out of a recession, holding onto money is a good way of rolling in your own shit.
Well, I don't think any one of us is in a position to estimate how much money the government is likely to gain through tax either way, so who's to say which pot/proportion combination works out better.
You can safely say that a tax-break would reduce the money they gain in tax in the short term, before hopefully increasing the industry (and therefore the tax revenue) in the long term. I'd imagine it's clear for all to see that the budget is designed towards getting out of recession in the short term, so I think they've made the predictable associated choice. I don't think we're going to see tax breaks for industries that don't already have them before the UK's out of recession, surely?
Totally agree stealth badger, noone can say how much revenue a tax break would or wouldn't have brought in.
My point really is that getting out of recession will require action, the government we have at the moment are re-active rather than active, thats what got us here in the first place. Actually in fact they aren't even that reactive, docile is perhaps a better word.
We're coming out of a recession. We've had to spend a lot to get out of it - benefits, bank bailouts.
Every single party out there is gunning for cuts right now, and TIGA reckon we should give them some money.
Voters are going to find that hard to stomach. So, we're increasing university fees, decreasing NHS Research spending, but hey - tax breaks for games!
We have tax breaks for films. Why isn't that being targeted as a cut?
The more people there are employed in the UK games industry, the more tax is being paid by the industry. A tax break will attract investment, and see people moving to, not away from the UK to work in the industry. People working in the UK who are from overseas will pay tax, but not take out a pension in the future, so thats a wholly positive financial contribution.
Given that millions can be made in efficiency savings in the NHS for example, this could easily be funded, but the Government is more interested in staying in power than doing the right thing.
I understand how tax works, but thanks.
Millions can be saved in the NHS, but maybe the Government think the right thing, is that those savings go back into the NHS to prevent any fallback in front line services.
If you want to discuss taxation and spending, don't come up with glib and baseless "do the right thing" arguments.
'a one-eyed idiot' J.Clarkson
couldn't have said it better.
Our government are a joke, a ramshackle bunch of second choice morons, who didn't even have the common sense to jump ship when Blair resigned