WASHINGTON, D.C.—Federal legislation designed to provide wage-based tax relief for film and TV projects produced in the United States has been reintroduced in the Senate. Dubbed the Independent Film and Television Production Incentive Act of 2003, Senate Bill (SB) 1613 would amend the Internal Revenue Code of ’86 to initiate tax credits equal to 25 percent of the qualified wages paid on certain projects. These would include features, TV movies, miniseries and some episodic work, as well as direct-to-home video releases with total wage costs between $200,000 and $7.5 million. Commercials are not currently part of the measure’s language.
The bill was filed by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), and co-signed by 18 other senators representing a bipartisan mix. SB 1613 is very much the same as SB 1278, which was filed two years ago but fell by the wayside in Congress.
The measure is also similar to a bill introduced earlier this year in the U.S. House of Representatives (SHOOT, 2/21, p. 1). That anti-runaway bill, called the United States Independent Film and Television Act of ’03, would, if passed, provide a tax credit to qualifying projects with total wage costs between $200,000 and $10 million. The amount of the wage tax credit, in most cases, would be 25 percent of the first $25,000 in qualified wages per worker. The proposed legislation covers feature films as well as TV and cable programs. Commercials are not granted the tax break under the measure as presently written. The bill mirrors a measure introduced in the House of Representatives during the summer of ’01; that original measure stalled in Congress.
The new version of that House bill was reintroduced by two California congressmen, David Dreier (R-San Dimas) and Howard Berman (D-Van Nuys), joined by a bipartisan group of 45 members of the House of Representatives. A spokesperson for Berman told SHOOT last week that the anti-runaway legislation is currently being discussed in staff-level meetings and in some member dialogue with the House Ways & Means Committee to see what needs to be done to move forward.
Prospects for the passage of either the House or Senate bill are difficult to gauge. Backers of the Senate bill, for instance, are optimistic that they can attach their measure to pending legislation on international tax issues. On the other hand, there’s the reality of a massive federal budget deficit and a huge appropriation in the works for Iraq—an economic climate hardly conducive to the passage of tax incentive legislation.
