Children’s shows, animations and high-end TV productions have been granted new tax breaks in government measures designed to find “the next Barbie, Happy Valley and Grand Theft Auto”.
Children’s and animated productions with £1m of qualifying expenditure will receive an additional £42,500 in tax relief, the Treasury has announced, while a high-end TV, film or video game production will receive £5,000.
The audio-visual expenditure credit and the video-games expenditure credit replace existing tax reliefs.
The UK Screen Alliance has calculated that the benefit equates to a 0.5% more generous tax relief for film, tv and video games to 25.5% - rising to 29.25% for animation, where breaks have been extended from TV to include film.
The alliance is campaigning for visual effects to be next in line for a boost to avoid film producers taking this element of production overseas when they establish the majority of productions in the UK.
Arguing that a rise to around 35% could create 30,000 new jobs, the industry body is setting its hopes on the government’s budget in March.
