TPC60010 - Claims: How relief is claimed

Television Tax Relief (TTR) is a corporation tax relief. The television production company (TPC) must claim the relief for each relevant accounting period through Corporation Tax Self Assessment (CTSA). The TPC must complete the appropriate section (“Information about enhanced expenditure”) in the CT600  tax return form.

The tax return must also be accompanied by the requried supplementary information, and by either an interim or final certificate issued by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport confirming that the programme is British (TPC40030).

From 1 April 2019, all claims which are made in an amended CTSA and that are not made through through the online COTAX gateway, must include a completed CT600 and a corporation tax computation. 

 

Additional deduction

The TPC should indicate that it is claiming TTR with the software that it is using to submit its return. Version 2 only applies to accounting periods starting before 1 April 2015. Depending on the version, the following boxes should be completed:

Description                        CT600:    Version 2           Version 3

Tax due                                                           86                         525

Creative tax credit                                      _                           540 

Amount claimed                                         87                          545

Amount payable                                         89                          570

Creative enhanced expenditure          _                            665

Film/Creative tax relief                           67                          n/a

Enhanced expenditure                            101                         670

Payable tax credit                                      168                        885

Boxes 99, 100, 102 and 103 are not relevant to TTR in version 2.

Example

A TPC incurs total expenditure of £450k on a British programme. Of this expenditure, £400k is core expenditure. £300k (75%) of that core expenditure is incurred in the United Kingdom, and £100k (25%) elsewhere. The company is entitled to the following deductions:

  • £450k ‘ordinary’ deduction, plus
  • £300k additional deduction (the core UK expenditure is less than 80% of £400k, so it all qualifies (TPC55020)).

This gives a total deduction of £750k.

The figure that should be entered in box 101 (the ‘enhanced expenditure figure’ referred to in the Note to box 101) is £300k.

Payable tax credit

If the company is claiming any payable tax credit, then it should enter the gross amount of the tax credit before any payment of tax is due in the relevant boxes above.

Interim claims

The legislation allows relief to be claimed on an interim basis, assuming that the required conditions have been met. A programme may or may not have a strict budget, but where one is available it should be clear whether the criteria are going to be met.

Certain conditions which determine entitlement to (or the amount of) the relief can only be met with certainty once the programme has been completed. This includes the criteria for:

  • British programmes (TPC40030),
  • required minimum amount of UK expenditure (TPC40040), and
  • relevant programmes (TPC40050).

For a programme to be a British programme it must be certified as such by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) (TPC40030). Certification will depend on who is involved in the production and where the programme is made. Although the initial plan may be to make a programme which qualifies as British, changes in response to circumstances (such as the unavailability of a lead actor) may mean that the eventual programme does not.

Similarly, if a programme has estimated core expenditure close to the minimum of £1 million per hour of slot time, it may be that on completion the core expenditure related to the programme is less than required. This would mean that the programme would not qualify as a relevant programme for the purposes of Part 15A Corporation Tax Act 2009 (TPC40050).

If any of the conditions are not actually met on completion of the programme, then the position is adjusted to reflect the outcome. In cases where the payable tax credit has been claimed, this will be repayable to HMRC. Interest will by chargeable on this amount but provided that no careless or deliberate error has been made, no penalty will usually be charged.

Supplementary Information

Claims should be supported by certain additional information. There are two cases with differing requirements:

  • programmes which are completed within a single accounting period, and
  • programmes whose production takes more than one period.

Each of these cases is covered at TPC60020.