Ukie announces how it intends to work with the broadest possible cross section of the UK games industry, to ensure that UK games businesses get the best possible tax breaks system.
Her Majesty’s Treasury (HMT) has today published the consultation on video games tax relief. You can find the document here www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/consult_creative_sector_tax_reliefs.htm.
Ukie’s consultation programme will hear opinions from as many people within the industry as possible, to ensure that a tax break is designed to fully benefit all parts of the industry.
Ukie will be holding individual sessions with a wide cross section of the industry to drill deeper into the key issues. These meetings will start immediately and games companies of all sizes are encouraged to get in touch if they would like to take part in one of these.
Ukie shall also be holding larger group meetings with members (Ukie’s new Developer Group in particular will be key in giving input to the consultation) and the dates of these larger meetings will be announced shortly.
Additionally, Ukie is planning on holding several regional meetings around the country, to make sure that all parts of the industry are able to be heard. Ukie will be announcing dates and venues for these as soon as possible, but they are likely to take place in existing and growing games clusters such as Birmingham, Dundee and Bristol.
The Treasury will use the consultation to gather views on the proposed policy design of the new relief and comments on the summary of impacts provided in the document. HMT has also included a request for supporting evidence, which will be used to design the State Aid approval process.
Following standard government practice, there will be a 12-week period of consultation, meaning that responses must be in by Monday 10 September.
During these three months, the Treasury and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) will hold several events to canvass opinion from all parts of the industry. Ukie will be attending these consultation sessions as well as working closely with government to ensure that these events reach the right people and ask the right questions.
Ukie is the only trade body that represents the widest possible definition of the UK’s interactive entertainment industry: all the major UK and global publishers remain a core part of Ukie membership but we also now represent many UK development studios, and in fact non-publisher members make up the majority of Ukie membership. This includes promising start-ups like RIE Studios, rising stars such as Six to Start, Mediatonic and Mind Candy, as well as established Triple-A studios like Creative Assembly and TT Games. Ukie also has distributors, academic institutions, new publishers, and media outlets as members.
Please contact daniel.wood@ukie.org.uk if you would like to be part of Ukie’s tax breaks consultation programme.
Ukie CEO, Dr Jo Twist said: “Ukie is in a great position to listen to the industry to help shape the government’s thinking on the tax breaks to ensure we get the best possible system for UK businesses. We’ll be reaching out to as many people as possible and making sure we are in conversation with Tiga, as part of our consultation process. Our membership now includes some of the very best of UK development talent and we will be helping them to have their voice heard by government on this vital issue.’