Proposed bill would give filmmakers tax credit
Media School students interested in filmmaking may be able to stay in Indiana, make films and receive a tax credit, if a proposed bill in the Indiana House of Representatives succeeds.
In January, the house will consider the Indiana Film and Media Production Tax Incentive bill, which would provide credits of up to 30 percent in labor expenses for productions with more than $50,000 in costs.
Jon Vickers, founding director of IU Cinema and a member of the 15-person committee drafting and proposing this bill, said 35 states have incentives like this already in place. Indiana did launch a program in 2007 providing tax credits but it lasted only until 2013.
“It was poorly written,” said Vickers. “There were very minor credits, and it attracted nothing, really.”
Now Vickers, along with a IU faculty and students, film commissioners, state representatives and filmmakers, are working to encourage legislators to pass this new bill. Indiana Rep. Matt Pierce, also a Media School senior lecturer, will introduce the bill in the house in January.
“We took the charge of writing a new bill for about year and a half ago,” said Vickers. “We researched the 35 states’ incentives, and wrote a very respectable and well put together bill.”
The proposal calls for more generous credits than last time, he said, but still are moderate compared to some other states’ rebates. The bill he and his team is proposing caps at about $20 million, which some states give rebates for productions costing as much as $100 million.
“We’re not trying to attract big productions with this bill,” Vickers said. “But we do want to attract films that should be made in the state of Indiana.”
This is just one of the reasons the incentive program is being created in the first place. Not only would more films made in Indiana employ local filmmakers, but residual effects include more tourism, which benefits state and local economies.
Vickers said keeping filmmaking in Indiana counters potential “brain drain” of grads of the three strong media schools at IU, Notre Dame and Ball State.
“The students graduate with degrees in filmmaking and then have nowhere to go in Indiana. They have to go to the coasts,” Vickers said. “With the bill, we could potentially keep the grads, which will create more films. This could also mean more opportunities for internships for college students.”
Despite participation from IU faculty and students, the bill is not sponsored or officially supported by the university. However, that doesn’t mean IU won’t benefit from it, Vickers said.
“The 2020 strategy plan for the university is to help build a ‘healthy Indiana,’” he explained. “I think that the potential job opportunities and economic impact could help that. It’s a good project for IU.”
Despite its promise, the proposal has some pitfalls. The main one is that the state could spend potentially millions of tax money with no assurance that it will get it back in the end.
Due to the bill’s expenses, its passage isn’t exactly a slam dunk. Vickers projects the likeliness that this bill will be passed at 50 percent or higher, although he accepts that it might be a multi-year effort before the bill finally comes into fruition.
In order to increase the bill’s chances, the committee is meeting with state representatives, as well as state and local film commissioners and state legislatures, to convince them to support the passage of this bill.
Vickers and his team have also created a grass-roots campaign. The committee hopes to get at least 1,000 people in Indiana to write letters to their state representatives and further spread the message.
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