Georgia Senate Committee Basically Guts Cap On Production Tax Credits As Bill Goes Down To The Wire
22.03.2024 - 02:39
/ deadline.com
A cap on Georgia’s film and television production tax credit looks much different now in the latest version of a bill that’s passed from the House to the Senate.
An annual cap on tax credit transfers, the prospect of which gave the entertainment industry some agita, was actually lowered to 2.3% of the state budget (about $830 million at current levels) in the Senate version from 2.5% ($900 million) in the House. However, the Senate Finance Committee inserted some major exemptions that make the cap almost meaningless.
Mainly, productions shot at the biggest Georgia studios would not count towards the cap. Big, according to the bill, means either $100 million in investment through 2023 to 2027, or a footprint of at least 1.5 million square feet of stage space. So, no worries for productions at Trilith and handful of other big studio complexes that are home to to Marvel and big franchises. Smaller sound stage owners are not exempt unless they are in rural areas outside the Atlanta metro area. But there’s a lot more room. With the revised bill exempting hundreds of millions worth of eligible tax credits from the cap, there almost isn’t one, as some lawmakers noted at a committee hearing this evening.
The bill can be changed by the Rules Committee — if it gets on the Monday schedule. If it doesn’t, it dies since the legislature is almost at the end of its session. If it does get through Rules to the Senate floor, it needs to return to the House and so on and all the back and forth would be done by Thursday.
Committee chair Chuck Hufstetler had not seen the bill until the hearing and “seemed very visibly unhappy about that,” said one person who was there, which may not be a good sign.
A generous tax credit regime has made
The website popstar.one is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can
send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.