Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This will upset some people, but John just isn’t a financial expert. His stabs at trying to understand the new UK tax relief rules for games development have been enthusiastic, but inexpert. Which is why we’ve turned to Chris England – developer of Xenonauts, and qualified accountant. As an independent developer, and a financial expert, the subject affects and interests him directly. So he’s taken a deeper look to see how it really applies to the UK’s indie developers, and why it fails to take into account the newer methods for funding development.

Back in March, the UK government made all of us happy by announcing that 2013 would herald the arrival of a new tax relief for the video games industry. They confirmed this in the Autumn Statement last week – but what does the draft legislation actually mean for British indie companies? Well, it’s (qualified) good news! The tax relief being proposed is pretty generous. Here’s a simple breakdown of how it will work.

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With last week’s Autumn statement giving UK games developers a long-fought-for tax break, details are now available about who will be eligible. This test is in response to European laws that are necessary for such breaks to be put in place, and at first appears to require that the games and the teams in question have some elusive notion of Britishness. Um… you like curry with chips? But when you see what the words actually say, it seems it’s not really a test for Britishness at all.

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The suggestion of tax breaks for the UK games industry has been something of a ten pound note on a thread of cotton, yanked away just about every time the industry thinks it can reach for it. The plans are yet again being looked at, promised to appear next Spring, and this time with the rather peculiar suggestion that projects should be measured to see if they’re “culturally British”. Huh.

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