It comes down to two words that make the biggest difference according to filmmakers WHAS11 spoke with – non-transferable and non-refundable tax credits. What that means is once your tax liability is at zero, there's no way to get any money back.
While we'll see the effect of this in the next couple of years, a Louisville film festival is making its mark as a leader for women directors.
The film industry in Kentucky has slowly been rising. Many people in film attribute that to Kentucky's generous film incentive program which gave tax credits to the filmmakers.
"The Kentucky Film Incentive I feel like just when people were starting to realize that we had a really viable and good program, unfortunately the present administration changed it,” Gill Holland, a Louisville Film Society Board Member, said.
In fact, six recent movies are unique because each of the directors is a woman.
“It was decided by the board which films would be included and then when we looked at it afterwards, we noticed that every single film was filmed by a female which was exciting because that's a unique circumstance,” Soozie Eastman, Executive Director of the Louisville Film Society, said.
But the change to the incentive program added two words that people in film industry say essentially killed any incentive to come here.
"The main issue is you can't transfer the credit anymore. It has to only be for Kentucky companies and we want to attract out of state companies,” Holland said.
According to the Kentucky Film Office, there is a $1,000,000 cap. The incentive is 30 to 35 percent of non-refundable and non-transferable credit, which basically ended the tax credit for some.
To put this in perspective, WHAS11 found that Georgia has a 20 percent film incentive, which is much less than Kentucky. New Mexico has a 25 to 30 refundable film production tax. Ohio has a 30 percent refundable and transferable credit.
We will see films coming out for another year and a half. Three of those films were made thanks to the incentives with the Kentucky tax credit program.
"Two of the films were out of state filmmakers that brought their money and production budgets to Kentucky and hired a bunch of folks,” Holland said.
Another downside is the movies had connections to the Bluegrass.
"Kentucky has great talent, we have great stories and we need to keep telling Kentucky stories to the world,” Holland said.
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