Today was The Budget, for our international readers that’s the day when the Treasurer pops out with a red briefcase and tells us how poor we are, how we are going to spend money we don’t have to pay of our deficit, and how he plans on raising that money(taxes!)
In Junes “Digital Britain” report a tax break for the video game sector had been proposed. This would reward ‘culturally British’ games with reduced taxes and various incentives. Obviously TIGA and the various developers in the UK welcomed this proposal. However with the pre-budget report out and no sign of any tax incentives TIGA wasn’t best pleased. The lack of tax breaks is made harder to swallow with the fact that they UK film industry has enjoyed incentives for many years despite being a failing sector, while the games industry in UK has grown from strength to strength, supported by high profile studios like Rockstar North, Lionhead, London Studios, Rare, Eidos and the up and coming Media Molecule.
Many countries have incentives in place for games studios, with THQ opening a branch in Montreal just the other week. With the chance of 3,550 new jobs in the UK with a Tax Relief it would be sorely welcome.
The UK deficit is currently at £850billion. In game related numbers thats:
- 3.4billion PS3’s (Enough for half the worlds population)
- 24billion years of XBL
- 9billion years of WoW
- Buy Activision-Blizzard, Nintendo, EA and have plenty pocket change leftover
