The Chancellor took a break from Number 11 to head down to Brighton today, visiting the Theatre Royal Brighton to launch the new tax relief for regional theatre touring productions which comes into effect on 1 September 2014
His visit comes as English Touring Theatre, in partnership with Theatre Royal Brighton Productions, announces a new touring production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, which will be the first touring production to benefit from the new tax relief.
Announced at Autumn Statement 2013, the relief will provide an additional corporation tax deduction, or a payable tax credit, worth up to 25% of qualifying expenditure for touring productions and 20% for all other productions. The new tax relief is estimated to cost £20m a year to operate from 2016-2017.
HMRC will administer the new tax relief in line with the current administration of the other creative sector tax reliefs. As with the other reliefs a claim to the relief has to be made in a company tax return, and be aligned with company accounting dates.
The theatre tax relief is expected to benefit around 250 production companies a year helping support plays, musicals, opera, ballet, dance and circus productions.
Tom Stoppard, playwright of Arcadia, said: ‘I’m delighted that a new tour of Arcadia, directed by the young, visionary Blanche McIntrye, is to take place next year reaching audiences across the whole of the UK.
‘The current challenges for regional theatre in the UK mean that a production of this scale and quality are very rarely toured. I welcome the news that a new tour of Arcadia is to be one of the very first to take advantage of the new funding incentives for touring live performance and has directly helped realise the ambitious vision of this tour.’
The theatre tax relief is part of a series of cultural tax reliefs introduced by the coalition government.
Osborne said: ‘We have successfully introduced tax reliefs to support the creative sectors, such as film, high-end TV, animation and video games. This shows how targeted support can make a real difference in promoting British culture and the way the UK is viewed internationally and we are building on this with the new theatre tax relief.’
The UK theatre sector is a key attraction for tourism, with visiting tourists spending at least £856m a year on arts and culture.