News Activision, Sony: Lack of UK tax relief is an issue

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2010/06/30/activision-sony-lack-of-uk-tax-relief-is-an/1

 

Not really surprising.

It's crap that our government are sticking to a plan that is likely to see the export of yet more skilled workers. Tax the hell out of the populace, then wonder why everyone leaves.

It's not whether the industry needs it or not, it's whether they have an incentive to stay here - as much as I hate to agree with Kotick, they don't have any incentive to stay here over paying for the employees they want from the UK to move to another country.

 

tbh the UK games industry could have been huge if it was supported properly in the 90's, now that a lot of the major studios have moved on anyway subsidies (should they ever be granted) would be shutting the door after the horse has bolted.

fact of the matter is how ever much money games make a large proportion of the people involved in the UK government see them as a waste of time. Add to that the "age of austerity" and you have pretty much no chance.

 

It didn't even require money in the 90s. Canada was putting their money where their mouth was from 2002 (post dot-com bubble). If Brown had tried investing money like the Canadians did, when his coffers were overflowing, we wouldn't have had this problem.

 

There is no point having tax incentives for the gaming industry in the UK, there are no UK publishers so all you would be doing is giving money away to other countries.

Also if you start playing that game it just becomes a merry-go-round, with the main area's moving all the time, you see it also with the CG(film) industry, the work chases the tax incentives so as soon as you've built an industry up it gone to another country.

 

I though it was a massive publisher that lobbied our .gov to stop the tax relief so that the rest of the world could benefit and we get raped of all our talent ... ?

Would be interesting to see who's bank account received the lobbying cash backhanders ...

 

Surely to get tax relief they could just apply for this which they seem to fall into the category of:
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/ct/forms-rates/claims/randd.htm ?

Then they could stop seeming so whine-y.

 

This suspicion seems to be falling on a certain Canadian-based company. Funny that.

 

"Activision and Sony bosses have admitted that the loss of tax relief for the UK games industry..."

There is no loss of tax relief - the tax relief was never there in the first place! It was a proposal that has subsequently been shelved as unaffordable. EVERY industry sees itself as a special case, every industry would argue for tax relief and cite special circumstances and hardships - that doesn't mean every industry warrants it.

I agree with the Eidos president Ian Livingston, that the industry needs to argue its case from a different perspective. That a hugely successful and hugely profitable industry is sticking out the begging bowl, (and essentially attempting blackmail to push their case) is nauseous.

Yes industries that are more easily mobile need to be taxed more carefully, but that doesn't mean they should just be able to avoid it under the threat of them moving elsewhere otherwise. Frankly, it's stuff like that that should be discussed at summits like the G20 - as Neat69 said, if these cash-rich, low labour, low equipment service companies are just allowed to flit from one haven to another, (as different countries rush to the bottom of the pile in order to attract the business) it ends up benefiting no-one but those companies themselves...

 

i guess you dont know much about politics

let me explain

under labour the goverment was actually losing money and the while the private sector should be large than the public sector as this allows more money to come into the country this is not the case


and becasue of this and the masive amounts of money being wasted the goverment needs to cut back on things and try to stabilise the economy, if the conservatives are still in power in a few years they will start to do projects like this becasue it will boost the economy

 

well the uk goverment is lowering corprate tax by 1% each year until 2015. At the moment the tax is set at 25% so every industy in the country is gettig a tax break not just the games industy and it should be the lowest in europe

 

I understand why the government has cut the tax relief idea. But it seems short-sighted to me. Tax relief would create more jobs and revenue from the company's that would want to do business here. I know cuts were needed. But I can't hep thinking that in the long run this cut is a big mistake.