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Before we had a games industry, we had bedroom programmers. I was one of them, and dabbled in the dark art of game coding, mostly making it up as I went along. In the last thirty years, a business empire has built up around us, and games programming is now recognised as a 'real' job.

The games industry is spankingly new when compared to other more established industries, and has in the past been viewed as a mutant discpline that could not be classified as art or science. Recently, thanks to the many billions in games revenue, the governments of the world have started to recognise the games industry as 'real' too.

This is a great thing. Imagine how much more fun school would be if making games was part of your class, or if game making was available locally at A-level! For those of you who want to make a life out of programming games, I want to let you know about one of the perks that is here right now; R&D Tax Relief.

Sounds horribly boring doesn't it? What about this; your government may give you 150% of what you spend back to you in tax relief for making games. Sound better?

Obviously there are different rules for each country, but the general idea is the same. If you are conducting research, development and making technological advances, the government will not tax you for doing this. If you make a significant improvement in technology, or increase overall knowledge in a field, you are making a technological advance.

The trick is convincing your tax inspector that almost everything you do is R&D, and that every cost you ever had was contributing to it. It is early days, and even the tax inspectors don't know what all the rules mean yet. Some games companies have even tried to put 100% of their costs down as R&D, only to be thrown out completely by the courts. Legal companies now operate special divisions for helping games companies claim the maximum tax relief on a project.

My advice, from one bedroom programmer to another, is to do your own research into R&D, and understand the concept of these new laws better than they do. I have always believed that developing games and game technology is an exercise in perpetual R&D, and it is only fitting that we are recgonised as pioneers in our field. We don't make pies!

Hmm, this is very interesting stuff. Surely TGC are going to be able to benefit from this?

For those bedroom programmers who are looking to start a company, it might be wise to attend the Chichester convention this year where Philip will be giving a talk on how to go about starting up a company, which you would probably need to do to benefit from the above situation.

@Lee : Your probably the only person in Wigan who doesn't make pies :o

Interesting stuff...

Coincidentally, Rick V persuaded me to join the LinkedIn website. I'd heard of it before, but Rick sent me an invite and I took it up. Within 3 days, I had a contact via Rick to a director of a major games company, who has links with a government funding project. I now have someone who will be looking at getting me government funding for a games-related project.

As Lee says, there's loads of tax relief. There's also a huge pot of money for "Creative Opportunities" that can be tapped into. These pots are regional, so you need to enquire locally to see what is available.

as mnem said, surely this will help TGC greatly. you make dbp, it does great to push the boundries of current technology by giving thousands of kids world-wide an insight into programming, probably going on to do great things for science in the future.

maybe this is an effective "subsidy" for TGC softwares?

What a great thought. I had written off some computer supplies for my own business, but didn't consider game programming as part of it. Thanks for the idea



Same here--- I never knew how many people I am linked to just from one or two large contacts. Some of these contacts can be very valuable to me in the future.

great advice lee, ill check out the australian components to this subject. Ive been writing it all off to the company as multimedia projects.

Thanks Lee, youve just reminded me I still have a mountain of receipts to sort out from last year
That Linkedin website looks really handy. Just registered myself.

At the risk of asking a stupid question, am I right in thinking these tax breaks only apply to the self-employed? I do have to do a tax return (oops, which reminds me ), but it's not because I'm self-employed. I do a bunch of cool stuff on my machine, but I can't say my livlihood depends on it ... my professional career benefits from it though.

I found a good link for Australian developers

The government will assist you to get to america for the GDC

http://www.austrade.gov.au/australia/layout/0,,0_S2-1_2z13-2_-3_PWB110817578-4_-5_-6_-7_,00.html

and here is an export market dev grant
http://www.austrade.gov.au/australia/layout/0,,0_s2-1_2zv-2_-3_PWB110423968-4_-5_-6_-7_,00.html
you should really look into this kevin picone

A sole trader/partnership is essentially a person or persons, so an individual has the same rules applied. I don't know where you would stick the expenses on your self-assessment form, but once you do they will be offset against your taxable income.
Sole traders and partnerships submit their accounts via the self-assessment, they just have an extra couple of pages to fill in.