New Florida Film Incentive in Effect

Film producers and production companies will be happy to hear that the new Florida film incentive went into effect on July 1, 2010. This new incentive program opens a window of opportunity for the State of Florida to gain a more competitive edge in the film, entertainment and digital media industries.

The Florida film incentive is an entertainment industry tax program totaling $242 million over five years. Transferable tax credits worth $53.5 million will be authorized for distribution during the 2010-11 fiscal year. If a project is qualified, it will receive 20 percent to 30 percent back for approved Florida expenditures. Qualified project credits are broken down into three categories. For all qualified projects there is a 20 percent base pay. There is a five percent off-season bonus and a five percent family friend bonus also available.

Bonuses

An off-season certified production that is a feature film, independent film or television series or pilot is eligible for the additional five percent tax credit. A certified theatrical or direct-to-video motion picture production or video game determined by the film commissioner to be family-friendly is eligible for that additional tax credit of five percent of its actual qualified expenditures. The following are considered qualified production expenditures in order to be eligible for the Florida film incentive: pre-production, production and post-production. Development , marketing and distribution costs are excluded from the tax incentive.

Queues

There are three separate queues within the Florida film incentive that a production project can qualify under. A queue is a yearly tax credit allocation. Not all production projects qualify for the same queue. The first queue is a general production queue. All qualified productions that demonstrate a minimum of $620,000 in qualified expenditures fall into this category. To be qualified under the commercial and music video queue, all national or regional commercials and music videos must have a minimum of $100,000 in qualified expenditures per commercial/video that exceed a combined threshold of $500,000 during the fiscal year. Lastly, any production that demonstrates a minimum of $100,000 but not more than $625,000 in qualified expenditures falls under the independent and emerging media production queue.

Ineligible Projects

It is important to understand that certain projects are considered ineligible for the Florida film incentive and will receive immediate rejection. Projects that will not be approved by any means are pornographic productions, weather or market programs, sporting events or shows, galas, productions that solicit funds, home shopping programs and political programs.

Visit www.filmorlando.com for more information.