Great news for the UK’s ailing games industry – the Government has taken an interest (at last) and appears to be actively seeking ways to provide ‘culturally based tax breaks for computer games’. This is a measure which the UK games biz has been clamouring for, ever since foreign tax incentives sparked a brain drain of home grown talent to places like Canada and Korea.
The new Minister for Creative Industries, Sion Simon MP has written a letter (which you can read here) to ELSPA’s Director General, Michael Rawlinson, and TIGA’s CEO, Richard Wilson, to open negotiations on the possible tax breaks.
The Government has requested that the trade bodies provide evidence and “specific examples of how a UK culturally based incentive may work in practice, a rationale for supporting culturally British video games and an analysis of how the introduction of such a measure would affect the UK video games market.”
Richard Wilson explained “If the U.K. development community were granted a tax break on cultural grounds (similar to the French system), this would financially benefit developers and help them to compete more effectively and on a level playing field with our international competitors.”
So now the hunt is on to find appropriate evidence to satisfy the government’s money men. “ELSPA will be looking to developers and publishers, large and small, to help us to gather the information required to create the most convincing argument possible in the hope of once again turning a ‘consultation’ into government commitment,” stated Michael Rawlinson.
It’s possible that nothing more may come of it, but at least there’s now a topic for discussion. Previous efforts by the Government to ‘help’ the UK games industry have included former Minister for Culture, Media and Sport, Margaret Hodge accusing Canada’s generous tax incentives of being anti-competitive. This is an all-round better start.
(Via IndustryGamers)
