UK Politician Urges Chancellor Jeremy Hunt To Keep High-End TV Tax Credit Threshold Steady In Next Week’s Budget

deadline.com:

A hammer blow to the UK’s hugely successful high-end TV (HETV) tax credit could be struck in next week’s budget and a prominent politician has written to the Chancellor urging him to reconsider.

Baroness Tina Stowell, who runs the influential House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee, wrote to Treasury boss Jeremy Hunt yesterday with a strongly-worded call to ignore requests to raise the threshold of the relief from shows that cost £1M ($1.2M) per hour to those costing £1.5M ($1.8M) per hour and above.

This is the recommendation made by a recent government report, which said that “rising production costs have meant that several productions which the government expects would have been commissioned regardless of the existence of HETV tax relief have become eligible.” Stowell’s letter to Hunt came a day after British networks, Netflix, Paramount and indie trade body Pact wrote to her asking for her help in protecting the threshold.

They said the changes will lead to fewer British dramas, comedies and documentaries being produced in the UK, along with a reduction in UK content exports.