Legal Niches

EA Urges Utah to offer Game Industry Tax Breaks

By james_fudge

On Wednesday, surrounded by Utah Governor Gary R. Herbert and other state and local officials, Electronic Arts executives had a "grand opening" of its offices in Salt Lake City to much applause. The office has actually been running in Salt Lake for three months, but this grand celebration allowed the public to get a look inside EA's new operation. The 20,000-square-foot office serves as a base to develop and manufacture games featuring pet and Nerf guns toys for children and families as part of an agreement it signed with Hasbro.

But after the ceremonial "grand opening," EA took the opportunity to strongly urge Utah lawmakers to give the videogame industry more tax incentives on par with what it currently gives the film industry. EA government affairs director Craig Hagan led the charge, saying that in other parts of the country, like Texas and Florida, and in Canada's Vancouver and British Columbia, governments are offering rebates on corporate income taxes of up to 42 percent to companies like EA. Read More

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Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on July 22, 2010 (boomark / email).