A Digital Games Tax Offset to be available from 1 July 2022 has been announced.
The purpose of the offset is to encourage the growth of the digital games industry in Australia. The rationale is the understanding that skills in the digital games area are readily transferable to other sectors.
Sectors mentioned in the government’s announcement that would benefit from a skills transfer include:
- defence innovation
- medical technology
- education technology
- emergency planning
- construction (digital twins) *
- agtech
- modern manufacturing
* According to networkworld.com a “digital twin” is “a dynamic software model of a physical thing or system that relies on sensor data to understand its state, respond to changes, improve operations and add value.” Digital twins were named by Gartner as one of the Top 10 technology trends you should know for 2017.
Criteria and definitions for the tax offset will be subject to consultation.
The framework of the offset as announced will include:
- the offset will be 30% of minimum $500,000 of qualifying Australian games expenditure
- games with gambling elements or that cannot obtain a classification rating will not be eligible
- the offset will be refundable
- the offset will be available to Australian resident companies or foreign resident companies with a permanent establishment in Australia
- proposed commencement date 1 July 2022
A Government media release issued on 21 March 2022 indicates that the offset will be capped at $20 million per year.
Draft legislation for the measures has been published by Treasury with feedback sought by 18 April 2022.
See updated information (still to be legislated) on the government’s digital games policies here.
For progress on the legislation through parliament, see Treasury Laws Amendment (2022 Measures No 4) Bill 2022
This page was last modified 2022-11-23