While Keith Vaz being mocked in absentia at this week’s eForum roundtable on the state of the UK games industry was a humorous aspect of the proceedings, there were also some deep insights to emerge from the meeting as well.
Jas Purewal attended the forum and wrote up a couple of the more interesting notes on his website. Among them, a comment from Shadow Culture Minister Ed Vaizey (pictured) that if the Conservative party comes into power this year, there would most likely be no movement on creating tax incentives for game developers for two to three years. Vaizey reasoned that a focus on correcting the current recession would take top priority and push any talk on incentives to the back burner.
Vaizey also disclosed his hope that TIGA and ELSPA could work together more closely in the future, or even merge.
More coverage from the forum on the topics of tax breaks, digital distribution and education can be found on this page of Purewal’s site.



Comments
Re: Vaizey: Conservatives in Power Would Delay Game Tax ...
The key word here being "delay" instead of "ditch". At least they're being reasonable with it by saying that they do have plans, but they have to be put on the backburner for the time being.
Re: Vaizey: Conservatives in Power Would Delay Game Tax ...
Wait, conservative control making tax cuts unlikely? Is this one of thouse pants=underwear, rubber=eraser!=condom things?
Re: Vaizey: Conservatives in Power Would Delay Game Tax ...
Wouldn't tax incentives for developers help with the recession? Give incentives, new jobs are created. It doesn't sound like a bad thing.
Re: Vaizey: Conservatives in Power Would Delay Game Tax ...
Well, you do need the money to back up those incentives. So if fewer people are working, the government gets less income tax money. If fewer people are working that also means that they have less money to spend and thus the government gets less sales tax money.
So it really should be top priority to get some stability back to the economy, but part of that is incentives for businesses to start hiring again.
E. Zachary Knight
Oklahoma City Chapter of the ECA
http://www.theeca.com/chapters_oklahoma
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
OK Game Devs
Random Tower
Re: Vaizey: Conservatives in Power Would Delay Game Tax ...
Among them, a comment from Shadow Culture Minister Ed Vaizey (pictured) that if the Conservative party comes into power this year, there would most likely be no movement on creating tax incentives for game developers for two to three years. Vaizey reasoned that a focus on correcting the current recession would take top priority and push any talk on incentives to the back burner.
In other words, If the conservative party comes into power, they're going to focus on fixing the current mess first instead of just compounding it. Sounds like a good idea to me.