Vancouver Least Taxing of World’s Major Cities

Given that taxes plays a major-role in the ability of states and countries to lure videogame developers, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at results from a recent KPMG study (PDF) into the tax competitiveness of 95 cities and countries around the world.

The guide rated the locales using a Total Tax Index (TTI), which was described as a measure of “the total taxes paid by corporations in a particular location, expressed as a percentage of total taxes paid by corporations in the U.S.” This methodology uses the U.S. as a benchmark with a score of 100.0*.

The TTI rankings placed Mexico first among countries, with a 59.9 score, indicating that total tax costs in the country are 40.1 percent lower than in the U.S. Canada came in second place, followed by the Netherlands, Australia, the UK, the U.S., Germany, Italy, Japan and France.

City-wise, Vancouver was ranked the tops, with Monterrey (Mexico), Mexico City, Montreal and Toronto rounding out the top five. Baltimore was the top ranked U.S. city at number 10, with Minneapolis at number 12, Boston at number 13, Philadelphia at number 14 and Detroit at number 15. New York City was ranked 27th, Los Angeles 32nd and San Francisco 33rd.

Manchester was the highest ranked UK city, at number 8, while Osaka was the top Japanese entry, coming in at number 37. Melbourne, Australia checked in at number 9 and Sydney at number 11.

The ranking of other gaming development hotbeds included Seattle (18), London (25), Tokyo (39).

Results were also broken out for specific industries such as manufacturing, corporate & IT services, and research & development.

_{* "Superfluous" zero actually used in original report}