Give tax break to games developers, government asked

Date: 1st September 2009

Taxation rules in the UK should be changed in order to help entrepreneurs in the technology sector, one specialist said today.

Charles Cecil, managing director of UK games company Revolution Software, said that small games developers should get a "cultural tax credit" from the government.

Other competitor nations, such as Canada and France, offer workers in the industry a tax break of up to 40 per cent.

UK games developers currently rank third in the world behind the US and Japan with around £1 billion added to the nation's GDP each year, but the sector is expected to fall to fifth place this year and to sixth in 2010.

Mr Cecil added: "From my perspective it's about a level playing field [for games developers].

"It's just not fair for it to be so much cheaper to develop games abroad."

A recent report from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts showed that around 75 per cent of representatives of the games industry felt that intellectual property development in the UK was a problem.

Two in three believed that helping the firms to save tax would help the situation.