Parliament Research Center: Tolls up to one thousand billion tomans should be levied on foreign games

The share of native games is 42.8% and the share of console games is 0.2%

According to Iran digital economy annotation, In the proposal of the 2024 budget bill by the parliament, it is stated that the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, in cooperation with several other ministries, is required to collect taxes from the suppliers of all kinds of foreign games.

The parliament Research Center also emphasized that we have a weakness in the field of local games and suggested that the importers of games that can be installed on computers, mobile phones and game consoles should be identified and their names should be provided to the country’s tax affairs organization, and this organization should levy a duty equal to 10 percent. Collect the sale price up to 10 thousand billion rials and deposit it to the general revenue account at the treasury of the whole country. This talk is brought up while a significant share of the foreign games market in Iran is either smuggling or buyers buy games online.

The parliament Research Center has published a series of proposals for the 2024 budget bill, one of which is related to the issues of the Ministry of Guidance. In this regard, the research center has made proposals to increase the budget through collecting duties and taxes in the field of local game productions.

It is further stated that 100% of the sums collected from foreign game suppliers will be placed at the disposal of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (National Computer Games Foundation) to support the development of domestically produced games.

In addition to the duties received for the import of goods and cultural products, the government is obliged to add up to 4% to the tariff of these goods and products and after receiving the total duties, to deposit the resources to the general revenue account at the treasury of the country. Finally, the revenue is spent to produce indigenous digital games, show content and support handicrafts.

The share of native games in game consoles is only 2%

The research center has announced that despite the growth of domestic investment in the field of video games, the market is still dominated by foreign producers: “Currently, the share of local games is 42.8%, and more precisely, the share of local games in mobile games is 40%, in computer games 3% and In console games, it is 0.2 percent. “Also, despite the growth of domestic investment in this area, the domestic market is still capturing foreign products.”

This center adds: “According to the statistics published in 2021, the total expenditure of Iranian players for hardware and software of digital games was equal to 19,279 billion tomans; Among these, the hardware market share is estimated at 16,700 billion tomans and the software market share is estimated at 2,612 billion tomans.

Receipt of such fees is related to the decision of the National Cyberspace Center; Since 2017, this center approved a resolution in line with the definition of the budget law, in which the phrase “executive instruction to receive 10% of the revenues from the publication and commercial and official supply of foreign computer games” was mentioned.

According to the latest report of the Digital Games Research Center (DIRK) and the National Foundation of Computer Games, last year gamers spent 456 billion Tomans to buy software (games), of which 14 billion Tomans were native computer games (games developed or locally made by domestic companies). ) which includes a figure less than 4%. This statistic shows that despite taking a percentage of foreign suppliers’ income since years ago, the market is still not in the hands of Iran in the field of computer games.