Brink Developer: UK Tax Breaks Not Necessary
But more could still be done to support industry.
You’d think that the CEO of Brink developer Splash Damage would welcome the idea of tax breaks for the UK games industry. You’d be wrong.
In an interview with the Telegraph, studio head, Paul Wedgewood, said that such moves by the government are unnecessary. “It’s not true you need the tax breaks to get deals to make great games. Because we’ve been doing it for ten years and we’ve never had to pay an IP type tax breaks. Secondly there are already research and development tax breaks in the UK that companies are able to achieve.
“There’s this excuse that you need to own the intellectual property, which isn’t true. We didn’t for our first couple of games and we achieved R&D tax breaks in the correct brackets for a company that doesn’t own their own IP. And now we can make claims under a different R&D tax credit, which is even better. These tax credits run into the hundreds of thousands of pounds.
“So if it’s a question of saving 10-20% of your overheads, it’s already possible with the R&D tax credits that exist in the UK to do exactly that.”
Wedgwood added, however, that additional means of support shouldn’t be ignored. He said that a grant-based system, a “more meaningful” tax break system and more efforts to support university endeavours could all still be implemented to better help the industry flourish.
Source: Telegraph
In an interview with the Telegraph, studio head, Paul Wedgewood, said that such moves by the government are unnecessary. “It’s not true you need the tax breaks to get deals to make great games. Because we’ve been doing it for ten years and we’ve never had to pay an IP type tax breaks. Secondly there are already research and development tax breaks in the UK that companies are able to achieve.
“There’s this excuse that you need to own the intellectual property, which isn’t true. We didn’t for our first couple of games and we achieved R&D tax breaks in the correct brackets for a company that doesn’t own their own IP. And now we can make claims under a different R&D tax credit, which is even better. These tax credits run into the hundreds of thousands of pounds.
“So if it’s a question of saving 10-20% of your overheads, it’s already possible with the R&D tax credits that exist in the UK to do exactly that.”
Wedgwood added, however, that additional means of support shouldn’t be ignored. He said that a grant-based system, a “more meaningful” tax break system and more efforts to support university endeavours could all still be implemented to better help the industry flourish.
Source: Telegraph
Companies:
Splash Damage
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