For Mark Hankey, executive producer of Boston-based Picture Park (an AICP-member company), one of the most important elements of Massachusetts’ recently passed production incentives package is that it applies not only to features and television programs, but also to commercials.
Hankey is a member of the Massachusetts Production Coalition (MPC), which played a key role in helping to bring about this anti-runaway production measure. The MPC is an alliance of production professionals and related groups in the state that are actively engaged in content creation for all media. The mission of the volunteer-driven coalition is to help maintain, promote, increase and expedite the development, creation and production of film, video and new media content in the city of Boston and throughout the state of Massachusetts.
MPC representatives lobbied vigorously for the production incentives, garnering bipartisan support for the initiative in both houses of the state legislature.
Hankey was brought into the MPC fold earlier this year by Chris O’Donnell, IATSE Local 481 business manager and MPC legislative committee chairman. In a relatively brief span, the MPC has made significant gains.
As reported last week (SHOOT, 12/9, p. 1), the principal elements of the incentives package include: a 20 percent wage tax credit on a filming project’s source payroll in Massachusetts; a 25 percent tax credit for qualifying Massachusetts production expenses (excluding payroll); and a sales tax exemption on Massachusetts production costs.
To qualify for the 20 percent tax credit and the sales tax exemption, a producer has to incur at least $250,000 in Massachusetts-based production costs in a year. To be eligible for the aforementioned 25 percent tax credit, more than half of the total production must take place in Massachusetts or more than half of the total production costs need to be spent in the state.
The total credits available for any single production are capped at $7 million. And there’s no appropriations cap on the bill, meaning that funding for the anti-runaway provisions will cover the entire year.
The new measure is scheduled to take effect in late February, 90 days after it was signed into law by Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.). However, the provisions will be retroactive to January 1, 2006.
AICP executive VP Steve Caplan described the legislation as “ambitious and far reaching….We’re encouraged and pleased to see these incentives enacted–and that they apply to commercials.”
Next on the MPC agenda is to bring about the formation of a state sanctioned film commission under the Massachusetts Executive Office of Economic Development. A full-fledged state film office is needed to help facilitate and administer the new incentives.
O’Donnell related, “This new law is going to open the floodgates for production in Massachusetts, and we have to become very effective in channeling this new business into our community. The MPC’s sole agenda is to facilitate production in the commonwealth–and we look forward to working with the Office of Economic Development to make this the mission of the new film office as well.”
