How the UK patent box differs from overseas regimes

Mark Bevington

The UK’s proposed Patent Box legislation puts it on course to join a number of European territories that are favourably taxing certain intellectual property (IP) income. With such growing competition can the government achieve its objective of increasing innovative investment and activity or is the regime an expensive race to the bottom with other taxpayers left to pay?

In fact the UK proposals are very different from rival regimes. They may focus almost entirely on patents but it only takes one patented component to bring an entire product within the regime.

Also the 10% headline rate may be higher than some rivals but this applies to all profits arising from patents except brand related income and a 10% mark-up on some routine expenses. This is much broader than most other countries who narrowly attribute income to the patent itself.

It must be remembered...

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