UK Video Game Tax Relief Cancelled 106
Stoobalou writes "UK game developers have just been dealt a financial blow by Chancellor George Osborne in his first budget, which sees the coalition government scrapping the video game tax relief plans promised by Labour. In his speech today, Osborne simply said the 'planned tax relief for the video games industry will be cancelled.' According to the government's budget report, the cancellation of video game tax relief will save the government £40 million in the 2011-2012 financial year, and a further £50 million in each subsequent year."
Corporate & Business Tax cuts (Score:3, Interesting)
Corporation tax is being dropped 1% every year from *25% (*current) down to 24% making it the lowest tax of its kind in the Western world.
Small businesses will also see a 1% drop in the rate of tax (between 300K-1.5M). Small businesses also have to start paying NI at a higher threshold, which means the first few employees are now much cheaper.
So, yes, this is a blow - but it might actually not hurt the small games industry at all and only hurt the big industry for a few years until we get down to that insane 24% corporation tax.
Re:And the other half of the story... (Score:3, Interesting)
But the advantage that he has is that they're part of a coalition, so it isn't just his party that takes the blame. In a way, this coalition has its very good points. There are almost certainly some of these measures that wouldn't have been taken without it, even if they were necessary.
Massive U-Turn? (Score:2, Interesting)
Ed Vaisey, now the Creative Industries Minister in the Department of Culture Media and Sport was a keynote speaker, and actually took time out of election campaining to be there.
The general gist of what he was saying was that should the Conservatives get elected, then he would be pressing for tax breaks for UK game developers (he also claimed the idea of tax breaks was partly his idea, but that Labour had taken the credit).
Also, at a Playing The Game panel session (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/industry-support-is-number-one-priority-vaizey [gamesindustry.biz]), he claimed
You are competing against countries that are giving active fiscal support to the videogames industry, and I think it's a given that you have to put something in place to, quite frankly, level the playing field - so it is my absolutely number one priority, should we win the general election."
O rly?
Re:Dollars? US companies? (Score:1, Interesting)
How had this been modded funny? The UK has about 700 regional cheeses. In comparison, France (who are supposed to be a great cheese nation) have only 600 cheese varieties.