Tax Aid Is Make or Break Issue for UK Games Industry, Says Trade Body

Logan Westbrook

Transform, Roll Out, Etc
Feb 21, 2008
17,672
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Tax Aid Is Make or Break Issue for UK Games Industry, Says Trade Body

Trade body TIGA says that no one is benefiting from the lack of tax breaks for the UK videogame industry.

If the UK Government doesn't start supporting the videogame industry, hundreds of jobs could disappear within five years. That's according to TIGA, following its submission of an 85-page appeal to the Coalition government, once again asking for tax breaks.

TIGA CEO Richard Wilson said if the UK government was really hoping to revitalize the economy, then encouraging growth in the videogame sector would be an excellent way to do it. He said that the government clearly understood the value of "cultural" tax breaks, as it had granted them to the UK film industry. A similar initiative for the videogame industry would create more jobs, Wilson said, as well as boost investment and generate tax revenue.

TIGA predicts that its proposal will generate over 1,300 new jobs in development roles, as well as nearly 2,500 "indirect jobs." Tax revenues would be in the region of £126 million, and the contribution to GDP would be around £307 million. Conversely, if the government rejected the proposal, Wilson warned that there was a very real risk that jobs and investment could be lost. The current number of jobs in the industry - nearly 3,500 - has apparently shrunk by 9% since TIGA first put forward its original proposal in 2008. Wilson said that that number could go down by a further 25% by 2015, if the government didn't intercede.

Unfortunately, with debts stretching into the billions, the UK government may have no other choice than to risk losing those jobs, as TIGA's scheme will cost money that it simply doesn't have. The Coalition has commented in the past that it would rather encourage overall growth [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/104881-U-K-Government-Giving-Help-to-the-Gaming-Industry-Doesnt-Add-Up] with initiatives like a reduction in corporation tax [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/105008-UK-Videogame-Industry-Might-Get-Government-Help-After-All], rather than single out one particular industry.

Source: Games Industry [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-01-26-uk-dev-workforce-could-shrink-by-a-quarter-over-5-years]



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SaintWaldo

Interzone Vagabond
Jun 10, 2008
923
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Logan Westbrook said:
Trade body TIGA says that no one is benefiting from the lack of tax breaks for the UK videogame industry.
Hey, jerk-o. THE REST OF SOCIETY benefits from the lack of CORPORATE WELFARE based on your industry. Do you hire educated workers? THEN FUCKING PAY TO EDUCATE THEM. Generating jobs is NOT the same as PAYING TAXES ON YOUR PROFITS.

Leeches.

(p.s. Logan Westbrook is in no way meant to be the target of the epitaph, "jerk-o". In this instance.)
 
Aug 25, 2009
4,611
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Not happening.

The ConDem nation are trying to stop women from working, stop anyone below millionaire status from going to university, destroying job security, taxing the ever-loving bejesus out of the working class and on top of that raise taxes on everything.

You really think they're going to give money to the videogames industry? They probably think videogames are responsible for broken Britain.

David Cameron's government (I know I should call it a coalition but lets not kid ourselves, the Conservatives are running this show) may not look like old men, but they are. Every single one of them is an old man, crying about nostalgia, and wanting to return to a past that NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED!
 

Danzaivar

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Jul 13, 2004
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Considering most of the games development students I know who seriously want a career in the industry are planning on emigrating because there's barely any games companies here, I'm inclined to agree.

Why stick around in the UK when other countries offer tax breaks? That's not even taking into account the ridiculous levels of tax levied at the workers here or the crazy rates of corporation tax for the businesses...

They'll offer £2000 per car to support people buying european/american/asian cars, but screw supporting stuff made in Britain, eh?
 

Wicky_42

New member
Sep 15, 2008
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VaderMan92 said:
Tax breaks in a socialist country? *manic laughter*
Lol, I'd say the Tories are making a good stab at getting rid of any semblance of socialism over here - privatise the NHS, raise VAT, lower income tax on the top earners.... it's all a fucking joke.

Logan Westbrook said:
TIGA predicts that its proposal will generate over 1,300 new jobs in development roles, as well as nearly 2,500 "indirect jobs." Tax revenues would be in the region of £126 million, and the contribution to GDP would be around £307 million. Conversely, if the government rejected the proposal, Wilson warned that there was a very real risk that jobs and investment could be lost. The current number of jobs in the industry - nearly 3,500 - has apparently shrunk by 9% since TIGA first put forward its original proposal in 2008. Wilson said that that number could go down by a further 25% by 2015, if the government didn't intercede.

...

The Coalition has commented in the past that it would rather encourage overall growth with initiatives like a reduction in corporation tax...
Hah, lets be honest: no way are the ConDems interested in supporting this crazy newfangled industry that just makes death simulators when they're busy cutting all the public spending they can lay their hands on. Their approach to recovery pretty much is all about the short term savings, with absolutely no consideration of mid-term recovery, let alone long-term effects. Well reasoned and researched arguments about job and wealth creation won't pass muster whilst there's still some public service to sell off! Everything must go!!!
 

VaderMan92

New member
Sep 9, 2010
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Capitalism FTW (with some government interference to prevent monopoly of course) competition is king.
 

Sebenko

New member
Dec 23, 2008
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What, something done right in this shit hole nation?

fuck right off, that's not happening.

I hear Canada is nice. Cool weather, too.
 

Therumancer

Citation Needed
Nov 28, 2007
9,909
0
0
MelasZepheos said:
Not happening.

The ConDem nation are trying to stop women from working, stop anyone below millionaire status from going to university, destroying job security, taxing the ever-loving bejesus out of the working class and on top of that raise taxes on everything.

You really think they're going to give money to the videogames industry? They probably think videogames are responsible for broken Britain.

David Cameron's government (I know I should call it a coalition but lets not kid ourselves, the Conservatives are running this show) may not look like old men, but they are. Every single one of them is an old man, crying about nostalgia, and wanting to return to a past that NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED!
While unpleasant understand that big problems are not going to ever be solved without sudden, radical change. No matter what you do, a ton of people are going to be happy, and the current status quos are going to change due to them being unworkable. The big disagreement being in how that change happens.

Assuming your being accurate understand that right now there are problems throughout the first world (here in the US as well as in the UK) with child rearing in a general sense. Due to women's sufferage all the women went to work, the economies changed in response to a model where two incomes are nessicary to provide for a family. With both parents working, taking care of the kids is VERY difficult to do, and causes all kinds of problems that wouldn't exist if you had a full time home-maker/parent.

To be fair someone can ask "why does it have to be the women? why not the men?" that is a fair question, but one that can be answered by simply pointing out that women ARE wired far better for caring for children, even if men are fully capable of doing the job as well. Perhaps it would be at it's most fair to prevent both parents in a household from working or something in a general sense, but I can see why they are going with efforts to keep women out of the workforce.

That whole issue is a giant can of worms, there is literally no good solution to the problem that is not going to cause massive problems because of how society has changed around the current structure.

With education, that in of itself is another sucktastic issue. Education is a good thing, until you consider that in order to function society needs a LOT more people at the bottom of the totem pole than at the top. The world needs it's food service workers, farmers, janitors, factory labourers, and everything else to keep things running. However with an education when pretty much everyone goes to college/university, you wind up with everyone being qualified to do something impressive, and nobody wants to do those crap jobs. When forced into those jobs you see massive problems with societal discontent. Solutions like "well, we'll let immigrants come in to do those jobs" which we tried in the US don't work, because once the people immigrate their children become educated and wind up wanting those good jobs themselves.

Add to this competition, and an increasingly small number of jobs as technology makes things easier, and well, a lot of first world countries wind up with people holding degrees out on the streets doing nothing.

Right now there is resentment of the idea of an educational system designed to provide worker drones (so to speak), however it can be argued that this is a good idea. Prepping people who aren't competitive for college/university is a waste of everyone's time and money, as is trying to indoctrinate kids with a "you are special", "you can do anything" message when their future just going by the math awaits in one of the ruts the rest of us are in.

In general early testing tends to seperate the smart and talented from the rest of the herd as it is. If your not recognized as a genius or whatever by the age of like 11, your future is pretty much decided. There are a few other chances to break away, but that's pretty much how things are even if it's unfair.

The point here is that there is a solid case, as sucktastic as it is, for a more pragmatic educational system designed around the need of producing a working class. Indoctrinating everyone to be a leader causes a lot of problems when there is nobody to lead.

All of this sucks, but well, I can see where these guys are coming from. It seems like a solid set of positions, and while there is a lot to hate there, there are worse ideas, and I'm sure just about any other proposed solution/movement is going to anger just as many people. After all nobody wants to be told "you have to give up your career, and oh, you know Junior... yeah well he's a very average person, we're going to groom him to enter the blue collar workforce".

At any rate, after that rant (which hopefully some people read without flaming) I will say that I'm a bit surprised there is so much desire for the goverment to give tax breaks to the gaming industry to be honest.

See, right now people are just looking at the roses and rainbows side of that, game developers having more money to put into games. In the long term though they are just as likely to wind up pocketing the money they save (just as they do with the money they save on packaging, distribution, and materials when they release digitally). What's more what will be a short term boom, will eventually become a hardwired part of the industry, and relied upon as part of the business model. This means that the goverment will be able to leverage game development throught he tax breaks.

While your from the UK, I'd imagine you've probably heard the whole thing about California's Governor bringing what amounts to a censorship bill (in an offhanded way) to the Supreme Court. This entire mess would be worse if the game industry was receiving more direct goverment incentives. After all, no matter how iron clad something seems when it first goes through, the goverment can always threaten those benefits. "Play ball with what we want, or we'll go after that tax break your getting". If the industry has structured itself around that Tax break and needs it as part of it's operating structure... well now you have problems.

The less govermental fingers in game development the better I'd think.
 

wammnebu

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Sep 25, 2010
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Unfortunately, with debts stretching into the billions, the UK government may have no other choice than to risk losing those jobs, as TIGA's scheme will cost money that it simply doesn't have. The Coalition has commented in the past that it would rather encourage overall growth with initiatives like a reduction in corporation tax, rather than single out one particular industry.

sounds like a pretty vicious cycle for the Brittish. There loss, the video games industry might be able to reinvigorate the economy with givecash cheats

dont worry england they saved a seat for you in the Great PIIGS
 

murphy7801

New member
Apr 12, 2009
1,246
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MelasZepheos said:
Not happening.

The ConDem nation are trying to stop women from working, stop anyone below millionaire status from going to university, destroying job security, taxing the ever-loving bejesus out of the working class and on top of that raise taxes on everything.

You really think they're going to give money to the videogames industry? They probably think videogames are responsible for broken Britain.

David Cameron's government (I know I should call it a coalition but lets not kid ourselves, the Conservatives are running this show) may not look like old men, but they are. Every single one of them is an old man, crying about nostalgia, and wanting to return to a past that NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED!
Well I think to go cromwell on there arse is coming burn the lot of them.
Source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00y37gk/Posh_and_Posher_Why_Public_School_Boys_Run_Britain/
 

RelexCryo

New member
Oct 21, 2008
1,414
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Therumancer said:
MelasZepheos said:
Not happening.

The ConDem nation are trying to stop women from working, stop anyone below millionaire status from going to university, destroying job security, taxing the ever-loving bejesus out of the working class and on top of that raise taxes on everything.

You really think they're going to give money to the videogames industry? They probably think videogames are responsible for broken Britain.

David Cameron's government (I know I should call it a coalition but lets not kid ourselves, the Conservatives are running this show) may not look like old men, but they are. Every single one of them is an old man, crying about nostalgia, and wanting to return to a past that NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED!
While unpleasant understand that big problems are not going to ever be solved without sudden, radical change. No matter what you do, a ton of people are going to be happy, and the current status quos are going to change due to them being unworkable. The big disagreement being in how that change happens.

Assuming your being accurate understand that right now there are problems throughout the first world (here in the US as well as in the UK) with child rearing in a general sense. Due to women's sufferage all the women went to work, the economies changed in response to a model where two incomes are nessicary to provide for a family. With both parents working, taking care of the kids is VERY difficult to do, and causes all kinds of problems that wouldn't exist if you had a full time home-maker/parent.

To be fair someone can ask "why does it have to be the women? why not the men?" that is a fair question, but one that can be answered by simply pointing out that women ARE wired far better for caring for children, even if men are fully capable of doing the job as well. Perhaps it would be at it's most fair to prevent both parents in a household from working or something in a general sense, but I can see why they are going with efforts to keep women out of the workforce.

That whole issue is a giant can of worms, there is literally no good solution to the problem that is not going to cause massive problems because of how society has changed around the current structure.

With education, that in of itself is another sucktastic issue. Education is a good thing, until you consider that in order to function society needs a LOT more people at the bottom of the totem pole than at the top. The world needs it's food service workers, farmers, janitors, factory labourers, and everything else to keep things running. However with an education when pretty much everyone goes to college/university, you wind up with everyone being qualified to do something impressive, and nobody wants to do those crap jobs. When forced into those jobs you see massive problems with societal discontent. Solutions like "well, we'll let immigrants come in to do those jobs" which we tried in the US don't work, because once the people immigrate their children become educated and wind up wanting those good jobs themselves.

Add to this competition, and an increasingly small number of jobs as technology makes things easier, and well, a lot of first world countries wind up with people holding degrees out on the streets doing nothing.

Right now there is resentment of the idea of an educational system designed to provide worker drones (so to speak), however it can be argued that this is a good idea. Prepping people who aren't competitive for college/university is a waste of everyone's time and money, as is trying to indoctrinate kids with a "you are special", "you can do anything" message when their future just going by the math awaits in one of the ruts the rest of us are in.

In general early testing tends to seperate the smart and talented from the rest of the herd as it is. If your not recognized as a genius or whatever by the age of like 11, your future is pretty much decided. There are a few other chances to break away, but that's pretty much how things are even if it's unfair.

The point here is that there is a solid case, as sucktastic as it is, for a more pragmatic educational system designed around the need of producing a working class. Indoctrinating everyone to be a leader causes a lot of problems when there is nobody to lead.

All of this sucks, but well, I can see where these guys are coming from. It seems like a solid set of positions, and while there is a lot to hate there, there are worse ideas, and I'm sure just about any other proposed solution/movement is going to anger just as many people. After all nobody wants to be told "you have to give up your career, and oh, you know Junior... yeah well he's a very average person, we're going to groom him to enter the blue collar workforce".

At any rate, after that rant (which hopefully some people read without flaming) I will say that I'm a bit surprised there is so much desire for the goverment to give tax breaks to the gaming industry to be honest.

See, right now people are just looking at the roses and rainbows side of that, game developers having more money to put into games. In the long term though they are just as likely to wind up pocketing the money they save (just as they do with the money they save on packaging, distribution, and materials when they release digitally). What's more what will be a short term boom, will eventually become a hardwired part of the industry, and relied upon as part of the business model. This means that the goverment will be able to leverage game development throught he tax breaks.

While your from the UK, I'd imagine you've probably heard the whole thing about California's Governor bringing what amounts to a censorship bill (in an offhanded way) to the Supreme Court. This entire mess would be worse if the game industry was receiving more direct goverment incentives. After all, no matter how iron clad something seems when it first goes through, the goverment can always threaten those benefits. "Play ball with what we want, or we'll go after that tax break your getting". If the industry has structured itself around that Tax break and needs it as part of it's operating structure... well now you have problems.

The less govermental fingers in game development the better I'd think.
Very well put. I agree with almost all of your points. However, with regards to education: There are a lot of geniuses who simply cannot get a decent education because of a lack of funds. It's true there are scholarships, but they tend to be pretty specific in their requirements. The end result is that it is people who are born rich who wind up running things, rather than people who possess the best talents. The system winds up being an aristocracy rather than a meritocracy. Hence, making a good education widely available is extremely important.

Anyways, excellent post overall.
 

Serenegoose

Faerie girl in hiding
Mar 17, 2009
2,016
0
0
"Look and Learn from across the Irish sea."

Your words, Osborne. Maybe we should actually -learn- from Irelands economic collapse, rather than do exactly the same thing that caused it. Government austerity measures don't work. SOMEONE has to be spending money when the times are bad. People don't have it to spare and businesses would rather spend it on 6 figure salaries for their highups. Unless the money flows, how do you expect the economy to kickstart itself? Magic? Wishes? Fairy dust?

Truly is amazing how this tory mess of a government, not even elected by a popular majority, is screwing things up so royally so quickly.
 
Aug 25, 2009
4,611
0
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Therumancer said:
MelasZepheos said:
snip.
I know there must be big changes, I'm not stupid. My problem with the Conservatives is that all of their changes effect the poor, the elderly, the vulnerable, more than they effect those who could afford it. Instead of raising taxes on the rich and the upper class, so far everything they have done has inconvenienced the working middle and lower class. Not the ones who don't work, but the ones who do.

Also with women, my main issue with the Conservatives is their massive elitism and traditional views, when traditionalism really equates to stagnation. They may not admit to it, but a lot of the new changes to the workforce (their latest is a bill which allows anyone who has worked for less than two years to be fired without reason) the main objective is to get women back in the home. They seem to literally see women as nothing more than homemakers, and it sickens me to my core.

I disagree about your 'if you're not a genius by 11 your path is assured.' I am extremely smart, tested well into genius levels on a wide variety of intelligence tests. Until the age of 16 I was in with the rest of the class. I knew I was smarter than most of them, but I couldn't do anything about it, and this was at a pretty decent middle class school. It's only now, at university, that I'm being allowed to perform to my full ability. If I had never gone to university, like my father and grandfather, also both incredibly smart men, I would have had no chance, and would have been stuck. While I agree in the broad strokes that some people really don't have what it takes to perform well at university, some people wouldn't find out until they got there. My father is incredibly intelligent, and didn't find out until about 30 when his employers sent him to do Open University etc, my grandfather didn't have any idea about how clever he potentially was until he was well into his fifties, and finally went to university.

Also, the new changes to the system do not mean the most intelligent children, the most deserving of the education, will go, it means only the richest will be able to afford to go. It will return the country to the 80s, the last time the Conservatives were in power, and that is stangnation, not progress. Finally, saying that the system needs to be changed is not even debated amongst education professionals, but Michael Gove is Education Secretary, and he knows nothing about education. He supports phonics, which are proven to give early short term gains in education, but cause later problems with understanding and comprehension. There's a reason that was abandoned in the 80s too. Also, the Conservatives kind of have their policies in their name. They wouldn't change the education system progressively forward, no matter how many facts were presented to them.

Really when it comes to politics of my country I don't care about videogames because there is so much else going wrong. Having cut nearly everything they can, losing people jobs like mad and being told repeatedly by analysts that their actions are going to result in another recession, the government were still surprised when they were told there was a 0.5% contraction of the economy last quarter. The specific quarter that they took over.

The Conservatives are using outdated and outmoded policies to try and fix our country, the same policies they used in the 80s which resulted in Labour having come in and fix things. Far from fixing our problems the Conservatives are going to fuck our country so badly in the next few years I am in all seriousness considering leaving once I finish university. And I thought I'd never leave.

Thank you for responding without flaming, and I hope you understand my perspective, even if we have to agree to disagree on some of these issues.
 

Therumancer

Citation Needed
Nov 28, 2007
9,909
0
0
Serenegoose said:
"Look and Learn from across the Irish sea."

Your words, Osborne. Maybe we should actually -learn- from Irelands economic collapse, rather than do exactly the same thing that caused it. Government austerity measures don't work. SOMEONE has to be spending money when the times are bad. People don't have it to spare and businesses would rather spend it on 6 figure salaries for their highups. Unless the money flows, how do you expect the economy to kickstart itself? Magic? Wishes? Fairy dust?

Truly is amazing how this tory mess of a government, not even elected by a popular majority, is screwing things up so royally so quickly.
Well, I can't speak for the UK, but in the US the differance between popular vote and the electoral vote exists due to wanting to make sure no state is entirely alienated from the voting process based on population. Basically everyone in a state votes, and then the result of that vote determines how the state's allowed votes are cast in the actual election. This is a simplistic version of course. I'm guessing the UK has similar issues based on regions. The popular vote isn't going to mean much unless that is done away with, and for all talk of "let's scrap the goverment" (in any nation) the chaos in doing so would be ridiculous especially seeing as you'd never obtain anything like an overwhelming majority consensus as to what to replace it with, and would be facing massive civil wars.

I'll also be honest in saying that going after the rich isn't typically the problem as they form the basis of the community being the ones who run the businesses and everything. In general if you DO pretty much nuke the rich and wind up redistributing the wealth, whomever you put in charge of that redistribution simply becomes the new rich elitist group and very little changes. I'm not a big fan of punishing the rich, even if I'm pretty poor myself, I'd much rather private citizens have that money and those six figure salaries, than some kind of empowered political committee. I also honestly do not trust tax collectors like the IRS here in the US and the like to collect and redistribute that money any more fairly. A lot of it would simply wind up going into the pockets of politicians rather than back into the system.

One of the reasons why I'm a militant is because I think that while everyone hates war, violence solves problems. Understand that there are only so many resources in the world right now, and the problems afflicting the Western world come about at a time when your seeing a massive boom in the Eastern world. China isn't exactly engaging in fair business practices, and engaged in massive patent and copyright thefts. This costs a lot of big businesses a lot of money, and the guys on the top of the food chain certainly don't tighten their belts, they take it out on the workers by cutting hours, laying people off, reducing wages, and going to other nations where labour is cheaper. A lot of people don't like to contemplate what it means, but when you read articles about how the Chinese are driving more, and in the midst of an automobile boom, the resources for that like metal and fuel have to come from somewhere not to mention the money to support it, and that's coming out of our "share" of the resources. You can't produce resources with magic, the only way to get that supply back is pretty much to get it away from them, which of course causes shortages making them rather unhappy with you. Or simply put, it's an irreconcilable problem since it's 'our' economy or theirs, and that's why wars are fought. "we", both the US and Europe on the other hand prefer to look for magical solutions, rather than simply acknowleging that the East-West war people have been foretelling for decades is pretty much here and it's going to be terrible on the level that will make World War I and II look like elementary school plays about rainbows and sunshine.

Simply put China represents roughly 1/3rd of the human population on earth by some estimates. A population that I might add has been living in relative squalor until now (and still does). The great western civilizations came about because of the global resources largely going to the west instead of there. It's not nice, because a lot of people have been screaming about how we need to help those people for a long time, but on a pragmatic level raising their standard of living means a massive cut in ours accross the board. These things don't happen overnight, and these massive economic problems are the signs of that happening. Of course like most things I don't expect anyone to do anything, and instead we'll all be sitting here whining about how we should have done something when it's too late and clarity sets in with the mainstream.

Basically, the problem is a cessation of growth, and an increasing lack of incoming resources compared to the demand. The rich and powerful have been there in every society in some form. Truthfully redistributing their wealth isn't going to do much in the long term when what you need is more coming in from the outside. No matter how you spread things around in the long term your always going to come up short, and that's going to get worse in proportion to the development of Asian economies.

None of that influances social issues like needing parents being present to parent children and the like, that's a whole differant issue of course though.

That's my thought at any rate.

... oh and on topic, as I said in another message, I think tax breaks for video game companies is a bad idea. In the long run that just means the goverment will have something to leverage them with.
 

Gindil

New member
Nov 28, 2009
1,621
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VaderMan92 said:
Capitalism FTW (with some government interference to preserve monopoly of course) competition is king.
FTFY. :p

OT: I seriously want to shout.

Why oh why is everyone looking for a handout?
 

Delusibeta

Reachin' out...
Mar 7, 2010
2,594
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0
Had Labour managed to pass it's tax break (which they would have got rid of as soon as they returned to government, most likely. My idle speculation is that they would have implemented 90% of the Tories' economic policies had they stayed in government), it would have done nothing. Their proposed "test of Britishness" meant that I wouldn't be surprised if Zombie Cow and (possibly) Lionhead were the only studios to get any money. The former got a handout from Channel 4 instead and the latter is owned by Microsoft.