Taxes axed, pix in mix
At the one-woman operation that is the Westchester County Film Office, Iris G. Stevens expects to answer more phone calls and e-mail queries this year than she did last year.
Stevens, the film office director who answers the office phone too, expects to hear from old contacts in the film industry who were driven to greener pastures for production shoots.
Since state lawmakers this month made New York”™s film tax credit program three times greener and significantly leveled an economic playing field that had tilted film crews and billions of locally rippling dollars toward Connecticut in the last two years, those Hollywood types are looking to return to New York. Stevens might be out scouting again for film-shoot locations in the county ”“ and charging companies no fee for her advance services.
Since Albany acted, “I had three calls in one day,” Stevens said last week from her Michaelian Building office in downtown White Plains, “from three major motion pictures wanting to scout Westchester.”
“Thank God this happened,” she said one caller told her. “We were all waiting to be back in New York.”
Their wait apparently ended when lawmakers in the recently enacted 2008 budget raised the state”™s film tax credit from 10 percent to 30 percent of qualified production costs for feature- length and television films, television pilots and television series. Those “below-the-line” costs include technical and crew production costs, expenditures for facilities, props, makeup, wardrobe, set construction and background extras.
Companies using production facilities in New York City qualify for an additional 5 percent city tax credit, bringing their total incentive for work in the Empire State to 35 percent of qualified costs.
The new measure, which Gov. David Paterson was expected to sign soon, extends the run of the film tax credit program by two years through the end of 2013. Aggregate tax credits in the $550 million fund will be capped at $65 million this year, $75 million in 2009, $85 million in 2010, $90 million in 2011 and 2012 and $110 million in 2013.
New York”™s credit is fully refundable even if the production does not owe any state taxes. The refund now is fully payable for the tax year in which the project is completed, rather than paid out over two years as in the past.
“Competition for film business is fierce, and we”™ve seen other states trying to draw our business away with an array of aggressive programs,” said Pat Kaufman, executive director of the state Governor”™s Office for Motion Picture and Television Development. “This newly enhanced credit will put New York locations back where they belong, out in front of the cameras again.”
Kaufman”™s office said more than 250 feature films are shot every year in the state and more than 100,000 New Yorkers are employed by the industry. “With the increased competition from our neighbors, the state was hit hard last year,” she said.
Unlike Connecticut”™s 30-percent film tax credit, however, New York”™s program still excludes costs of stories and scripts and salaries and wages for writers, directors, producers and performers.
“Is this a perfect thing?” Stevens said of the state”™s improved incentive package. “No, it”™s not perfect. Is it better than it was by a lot? Yes, it is.”
Stevens said she was moved to act in political rather than film circles early last year after reading that Alabama had raised its film tax credit to 40 percent and other states”™ financial lures for producers also were much higher than New York”™s. In the Northeast, neighbor Connecticut started its 30 percent film tax credit at the start of 2006 and New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts each have hiked their film credits to 25 percent, she said.
In its first two years, Connecticut”™s digital media and motion picture tax credit program involved 13 productions and had “a modest impact” on the state’s economy, according to a March report from the program”™s sponsor, the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism. The study by the state Department of Economic and Community Development found the program generated $55.1 million in film production spending, $20.72 million in new real gross state product, 395 full-time equivalent jobs and $6.58 million in new real disposable personal income through multiplier effects. Connecticut approved $16.5 million in tax credits for productions during the first 21 months of the program.
In New York, “Nobody was doing anything” to reverse the production exodus that had begun, Stevens said. Based on 2006 film production costs in the metropolitan area and the state”™s calculation of an economic multiplier effect, “This is a $5 billion industry in southern New York,” she said.
In Westchester County, “Whatever New York City was able to attract for film production, if there was a location involved, chances are we got them or at least got first crack at them,” Stevens said. In her liaison job, “You deal with the same four-dozen people year in and year out, because our industry is contract work.” Some of those contacts last year called to say they were headed to Connecticut”™s greener pastures instead and some stopped calling.
In 2006, parts of 14 studio-driven feature films were made in Westchester County. In 2007, Stevens said, no studio features and four independent films were shot here. “They were all in Connecticut,” she said. “That was what drove me to be annoying. It was all slipping away.”
Stevens brought her concern to county officials and the region”˜s elected representatives in Albany. She got the early support of County Board of Legislators Chairman Bill Ryan, D-White Plains, who last year enlisted the New York State Association of Counties to lobby for the tax credit increase. “That”™s how it happened, just sheer badgering on my part and not shutting up,” Stevens said.
Ryan hailed the new state measure, which he estimated could be worth $10 billion in overall revenue and economic impact statewide, as “really good news for Westchester and for the state, especially during this period of economic downturn. We were starting to see a real erosion of an important revenue source. Now we”™re in a position to reverse that and hopefully provide a boost to our local economies.”
“There”™s no loyalty in this business,” Stevens said. “And as our economy worsens, the value of a dollar is going to become more and more important. And it costs a lot of money to make a movie.”