News Tax relief for UK developers cancelled

That's a shame for the developers; it was a breath of fresh air when they announced the tax breaks.

Saying that on a purely selfish note the budget wasn't half as bad, for me and my family, as I had feared.

 

I caught it live just before I went out, and I could've sworn what he said was '..and the poorly targeted tax breaks for the gaming industry will be cancelled'.

Now, I never really expected it to go through (since when has a UK government shown any not-so-common-sense?) but calling it poorly targeted? Osbourne really needs to get his head screwed on straight for that one.

 

Well atleast Corporation Tax is being reduced 1% each year for 4 years. That has to count for something for these companies.

Whilst I dont agree they should be given special treatment, I do believe the UK has to be seen to be competitive in order to entice talent. Just look how the Europeans built CERN and spent billions in research and development grants to entice the best physicists from the US etc to work in Geneva. It worked a treat.. we could learn something there!

 

CERN is a pan-European project, 20 countries are funding it - with us being the third highest contributors paying almost 15% of the budget. So we are paying our fair share there...


With regard to the budget and how it affects the gaming industry in particular, or course it's sad to see planned (but not actual) tax relief for certain industries get dropped, but with a £900b+ debt rising at something like £10,000 per second, I think cutting back pipeline projects was always going to be an easy hit.

Remember too that a number of promises would have been made by the outgoing party knowing full well they were unaffordable and would get dropped - thus they can make cheap party-political gain out of it. The so-called 'poison-pill' strategy. Very grown-up politics.

As julianmartin and others mentioned, I think every single solitary industry can come up with reasons for why it is a particularly special case needing special help, that doesn't make it so. Also, a fair few European countries are in a worse situation than us, (and the US has an accelerating debt that makes ours look small fry) so while those countries may offer better incentives in certain areas (at present) we'll no doubt be trumping them somewhere else.

As for Osbourne maybe not being terribly polite about the gaming industry, well, to be fair, I think he had rather bigger things on his mind: What with all the hundreds of thousands of government employees about to be thrown out of work, the promise of mass strikes and civil unrest, and him personally likely to become the most hated man in the country...

The joys of 13 years of spending more than you earn, it finally has to be paid back. With interest.

 

but I know of several web development companies who employ more british workers than the larger game developers.

we need jobs, more tax payers, not a small group of people with a turnover of 80 million squillion etc.

 

By the way, people discussing what parliament should be called: A crowd, a rabble, a giant nursery etc. I've always favoured 'nest of vipers' myself...

 

It would have been really nice. It was a good, forward thinking plan, which is something Britain could use more of. The games industry is enormous, big business, and could have earned back everything that was put in and much more.

I am disappointed that they cut this, but I can't really blame them. It seems that this is the 'get us out of serious crap' budget, so it can't really be helped. Maybe if/when we are back on track someday, they can look in to this kind of thing again.

 

No surprise the tax break got shelved. In all though the Budget announcement was sweeping, full of cuts and savings, and much less damaging as it could have been. I was pleasantly surprised.

This pic always sticks in my mind when I think of UK politics ...



Saying that, actually I think the apes are far better behaved than our politicians!

 

Short sited in my opinion. I am heavily in favour of the budget in general, in fact I don't think they have gone far enough in terms of slashing welfare. However, cutting a few industries a break at the moment would not mean much of a loss in revenue, but in the long term will massively help our economy. Outside of gaming other industries like biotech really need this help at the moment.

 

Slashing welfare - a complete fallacy, successive governments have tried to tackle it and it never happens. Because they offer no alternative.

Try taking a trip up north to the old mining communities, manufacturing heartlands etc and show the benefit claimaints where the jobs are. London and the South East is a complete bubble that might as well be another country at the present time.

The only thought that came into my mind when the budget was announced was that i need to try and spend less next year (especially after a wage freeze already this year). Will that help the economy if i spend less?

 

Yea. I think the average single person on the dole isn't that big a problem. The biggest problem is all the no life teenage girls who get pregnant on purpose and then mass produce several kids and get a big bunch of money for each kid. So the girl herself gets 40 quid a week or whatever, and the boyfriend too probably, and then another 40 quid or so for each kid. Times 6 or 7 kids that's over £300 a week, and then they get housing allowance too and god knows whatever else. Multiply that by their entire lives, seeing as the lazy hopeless buggers never work a day, that's a lot of money.

 

"The promises for tax relief were made under the previous, Labour government and has been cut as the new Conservative and Lib Dem coalition seeks to reduce national debt. "

If the games industry removes itself to another country completely, exactly how much tax will we get out of it to reduce the national debt then?!?

 

One could argue that if a teenager does that, there have already been monumental failures in their upbringing, both by their parents and by society in general.

The problem is not society providing support for those less fortunate, the problem is unscrupulous people abusing the system. The power to solve that problem lies largely in the hand of parents and the wider community, and the first step is (and always will be) education.

The flip side of that is the way public perception has been manipulated to the point that when one thinks of welfare, scroungers is the first thing that comes to mind. This perception does a lot more harm to those who are, for whatever reasons, in genuine need of social support, than to those who abuse the system and simply don't care.

Finally, on the issue of 'lazy hopeless buggers never work[ing] a day' their entire lives, that is another commonly held assumption that I suspect is not true of every single claimant. However, once again, it falls to society to support and encourage people who want to get back to work, rather than penalise them.

Anyway, all I meant to say in this post is that we should occasionally try to look past our stereotypes and see what things are really like.

 

I'm not too sure how exactly the tax system works in the UK, but a large chunk tax is payed on the turnover, so a company with 200 employees and a turnover of $1 million is less beneficial to the state that a company with 100 employees and a turnover of $20 million. Then again I don't know where the publishing house needs to pay tax? I'm assuming the UK branch will probably have to pay the UK state tax for every game sold.

 

Both of those things are true. Sadly, the stereotypes are often true though too. Like I said, not every benefit claimant is a problem. I claimed it once as have most of my friends when they have been out of work. But for most people it's a temporary thing, for some people it's a way of life.

 

Okay, now this is getting just plain weird.

Develop is reporting that a major publisher intentionally sabotaged the government's plans for tax breaks.

According to the report, the unnamed publisher felt it would give the UK an unfair advantage over other nations and secretly lobbied the government to scrap all plans.

Kotaku thinks, via process of elimination, it could only be Activision or EA.

 

I don't understand what they hope to gain by killing the tax break?! apart from killing the local industry. Tax breaks benefit them as well as other and so what if it gives it an unfair advantage, that's the whole point of the tax break.

I think develop is just spreading a rumor. How exactly would you lobby that: "so um yeh, these new plans would give the UK a huge advantage and well that's just not fair play old boy, pip pip huzah"??!?!?!