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This petition is now closed, as its deadline has passed.
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to issue a WTO challenge to all countries that provide tax breaks or subsidies to local video games companies. More details
Submitted by Bjorn Toft Madsen – Deadline to sign up by: 14 May 2008 – Signatures: 11
More details from petition creator
In the UK we have had a vibrant and strong independent games industry since the dawn of computing. This community is now dwindling from 400 to 150 in the last 6 years, according to Tiga, the trade association for UK developers.
We strongly believe this is due to unfair and disrupting tax breaks and subsidies given to video games companies in other countries.
On this subject, Minister Margaret Hodge said in October 2007: "We're looking at what they [Canada] have done. We're not sure what they have done sticks by the WTO rules on competition and will have to think about challenging what they are doing if they are, in our lawyer's views, breaching those rules."
We strongly urge the government to urgently finish any investigation into the legality of said subsidies and, if appropriate, challenge these through WTO.
We urge the government to take action not by providing tax breaks for the UK games industry, but instead challenge the legality of tax breaks given in other countries. We believe that given an equal chance, the UK games industry will persevere and prosper and remain a significant earner for the UK economy as a whole.
