Devs cheer as Osborne okays game coding tax relief
Chancellor George Osborne has heeded calls from the videogame industry and agreed to provide it with tax breaks. Announced in today's Budget, the scheme will commence in April 2013, giving time for civil servants and stakeholders to thrash out the details - "subject to State Aid approval and following consultation", as Mandarin- …
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Great...
But what about the rest of us software developers. You know, the ones who don’t get to play games all day? <runs and hides>
plink plink
Just a drop in the ocean, but used as a headline grabber.
£35,000,000
You could just about make two AAA games for that, or approximately 1/3rd of an MMO.
He's so generous.
Re: £35,000,000
But just think how many Zynga style 'social' and 'app' games you could churn out with all that money! Gaudy Skinner boxes don't cost that much to develop.
hmmm
4000 jobs -that won't make a dent in the unemployment among the manual skills workforce
£172 m return from £35 m sounds like dodgy accounting
who can benefit?
Do you have to be registered then as working for a games development company, in order to qualify? Is it just the companies that qualify? Does it apply to one-man-band type companies?
Or can I get a tax break just for programming some basic and/or rubbish game and punting it on the mobile app stores?
If so, suddenly anyone who knows a bit of javascript can cobble together a game using something like Appcelerator's Titanium, and tap into easy tax breaks :)
Re: who can benefit?
my game will be a side-scroller called Tax Avoider
App Store
So if I go from being a sole trader to being a Limited company that publishes apps on iTunes will this benefit me?
Or is it just for the MP's mates that know how to fiddle the system?
Too bad...
... that none of the coders will be able to afford fuel to get to their offices very soon.
Re: Too bad...
Surely coders are going to be amongst the most technically literate people in the country. And therefore, the best equipped for switching to a work-from-home model.
Re: Too bad...
Yeah. If we weren't required to be constantly available for meetings, presentations, demands for feature-creep and "can you just .... it'll only take a minute..." :)
Actually we have quite a few home workers on our books. But -and it's a big but - and I would *love* to work from home - I would need a bigger house... with an "office" of some kind away from the kids, with a decent desk, chair, lighting, workstation (replete with multiple monitors), internet pipe, and shares in the electricity company. Easier said than done.
Tax dodge
So I write inventory tracking software for a living. All very dull. But if I write tracking software - WITH GUNS! - do I get a tax rebate?
Don't we already get this?
AFAICT, our beancounters classify any new work as 'R&D', which already qualifies for tax breaks.
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