City Considers Tax Credits for Movie Producers
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Producing movies and television shows in the five boroughs would be cheaper if a proposed tax credit is passed. That is the view of the star-studded cast, including the actors Ice-T and Joey Pantoliano, who appeared yesterday at a City Council hearing on the measure.
The legislation would give a city tax credit of 5% to studios that incur 75% of their production costs at soundstages in the city. The tax break, which would be added to the 10% credit already provided by the state, is based only on so-called “below the line” expenses, mostly for blue-collar union jobs. The program would be capped, at least initially, at $12.5 million a year and would be available to studios on a first-come first-served basis.
The bill, introduced by Council Member David Yassky and backed by the Bloomberg administration, is designed to keep New York productions in the city and to lure back those that have already fled to less expensive locations, such as Toronto, Vancouver, and Los Angeles.
The producer and creator of the wildly successful television show “Law & Order,” Dick Wolf, called himself a “dinosaur” at a finance committee hearing yesterday for filming his three series in the city. Most studios, he said, minimize the number of days they spend filming in New York to save money. Such shows as “NYPD Blue” and “CSI: New York,” for example, spend only a few days in New York filming street scenes and then head to studios on the West Coast.
“To give you some insight into the way studios think: ‘Anyplace but New York, anyplace but this city,’ ” Mr. Wolf said. “It is considered by most production executives to be the most expensive place to shoot on the planet.
“Without this, without the city contributing in the same way the state is contributing, it is highly unlikely that any new production is going to come in here,” he said.
Ice-T, who plays a detective on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” said that while his series is filmed on New York streets, the indoor scenes are filmed in a studio in Bayonne.
“I don’t think you want this industry to leave here, it’s not a good thing,” he said. “It’s kind of really wack to be in Toronto shooting a New York movie. It’s not cool at all.”
Producer Jane Rosenthal, who has worked with Robert De Niro on many films, including “Meet the Parents,” “Analyze This,” and “Wag the Dog,” said the added 5% credit would make filming in the city more affordable for many studios.
Increasing the number of productions in New York, Ms. Rosenthal said, would pump money back into the city’s economy, both directly, as when crews buy lunch in delis and restaurants, and indirectly, by further branding the city as a desirable destination.
While most of the council members agreed with that, Michael McMahon, Democrat of Staten Island, expressed skepticism, asking why the film industry should be granted a break when other important businesses, such as the New York Stock Exchange, are forced to cough up their full tax bills.
Mr. Wolf said movie studios don’t need New York because they can create the semblance of being here. The tax break, he said, would simply increase the probability that they would come back, create jobs, and contribute to the economy. In underscoring his point, he said “Law & Order” has had 10,000 speaking roles in the past 10 years.
A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, E.J. McMahon, who is a fiscal conservative, said he had mixed feelings about the issue, but compared the city’s tax code to Swiss cheese and noted that the city’s deficit was on the rise.
“There are fewer and fewer businesses actually paying the full freight, and more and more who are getting a break of one sort or another,” he said. “When you back up from it, the question is how important is the film industry really compared to any other industry?”
Without looking at the numbers, he said he did not necessarily oppose the idea but called it “the easiest bandwagon in the world to jump on, especially with this industry, because it’s a glamour industry.”
The bill is likely to pass. Shortly after it was introduced, Mayor Bloomberg outlined a nearly identical proposal as he was announcing that Mel Brooks would be making a film at Steiner Studios in Brooklyn.