The UK government has re-affirmed its lack of support for the indigenous games development community in the mini-Emergency budget today.
There will be no support for any tax relief due to such relief being badly targeted.
This tends to put the lie to Conservative MP Ed Vaizey's statement last year that, a Conservative government would introduce such relief in its first budget.
The industry has announced its shock at the Emergency Budget's scrapping of a tax relief package. This in itself is strange given that no such system had ever been properly instigated, despite being mooted in March 2010 by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The fact that the relief never appeared in the UK's most recent (and Labour's last) finance bill (PDF link) was not widely reported last April.
The reason for the lack of appearance was that, according to H.M. Revenue and Excise in March this year, "The Government announced in the Budget its intention, subject to State aid approval, to introduce a new tax relief for the UK video games industry. This will support game development by the UK video games industry. It will be introduced once the detailed design has been settled, and the relief approved by the European Commission as State aid. The Government will be consulting later this year on the design of the new relief."
So, the government cancels tax relief for the games industry... even though that relief was never in place.
There will be no support for any tax relief due to such relief being badly targeted.
This tends to put the lie to Conservative MP Ed Vaizey's statement last year that, a Conservative government would introduce such relief in its first budget.
The industry has announced its shock at the Emergency Budget's scrapping of a tax relief package. This in itself is strange given that no such system had ever been properly instigated, despite being mooted in March 2010 by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The fact that the relief never appeared in the UK's most recent (and Labour's last) finance bill (PDF link) was not widely reported last April.
The reason for the lack of appearance was that, according to H.M. Revenue and Excise in March this year, "The Government announced in the Budget its intention, subject to State aid approval, to introduce a new tax relief for the UK video games industry. This will support game development by the UK video games industry. It will be introduced once the detailed design has been settled, and the relief approved by the European Commission as State aid. The Government will be consulting later this year on the design of the new relief."
So, the government cancels tax relief for the games industry... even though that relief was never in place.
Comments
deleted 22 Jun 2010 17:57
1/1
Well Perhaps just maybe EA, SONY, ACTIVISION, MICROSOFT and NINTENDO to name a few should support the industry that places them at the top of the pile, its all well and good to simply blame the government (pricks they are) but Some more support to indies and upcoming studios should be given in forms of investment, these Bigger companies dont like risk, but also lets not forget us gamers that shaft creative talent and interesting ideas, No More Heros comes to mind when we dont buy this geart new stuff, seems everyone is to blame and it wont be long before all we have left is NEED FOR CALL OF SUPER MARIO FIFA HALO GEARS,
on a side note, wont the corp tax relief help and also the startup business reliefs??
on a side note, wont the corp tax relief help and also the startup business reliefs??