  We present two improvements to the tight-binding approximation of
time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFTB): Firstly, we add an exact
Hartree-Fock exchange term, which is switched on at large distances, to the
ground state Hamiltonian and similarly to the coupling matrix that enters the
linear response equations for the calculation excited electronic states. We
show that the excitation energies of charge transfer states are improved
relative to the standard approach without the long-range correction by testing
the method on a set of molecules from the database in J. Chem. Phys.
(2008),128,044118. that are known to exhibit problematic charge transfer
states. The degree of spatial overlap between occupied and virtual orbitals
indicates where TD-DFTB and lc-TD-DFTB can be expected to produce large errors.
  Secondly, we improve the calculation of oscillator strengths. The transition
dipoles are obtained from Slater Koster files for the dipole matrix elements
between valence orbitals. In particular excitations localized on a single atom,
which appear dark when using Mulliken transition charges, in this way acquire a
more realistic oscillator strength.
  These extensions pave the way for using long-range corrected TD-DFTB
(lc-TD-DFTB) to describe the electronic structure of large chromophoric
polymers, where uncorrected TD-DFTB fails to describe the high degree of
conjugation and produces spurious low-lying charge transfer states.
