A headline rate is the least useful number in a film incentive. Two states both advertising 30% can differ by twenty points of real value once you account for what actually qualifies, who gets paid, in what currency, and how long you wait. This page explains the mechanics the estimator models — so the ranking it produces reads as reasoning rather than as a black box.
Every program in this tool is one of five types. The type determines what you receive, and that matters more than the rate, because it decides whether you get a hundred cents on the dollar or eighty — and whether you get it in nine months or twenty-four.
| Type | What you get | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| RefundRefundable22 programs | You file a state tax return; the state pays out the credit in cash even if you owe no tax there. Full face value. | You wait for a tax cycle. Fourteen to twenty-four months is normal, and the biggest programs are the slowest. |
| XferTransferable22 programs | You receive a certificate and sell it to a company that does owe tax in that state — usually a bank or insurer, through a broker. | You never get face value. Credits trade at a discount and the broker takes a fee. Both are modeled. |
| CashCash rebate9 programs | Not a tax instrument at all. The state writes a cheque against a fund after you submit audited costs. | Funds run out. These are typically first-come, first-served, and the fastest to pay — eight to fourteen months. |
| GrantDiscretionary grant3 programs | An agency negotiates an award with you, case by case, against whatever it has been appropriated. | Qualifying is not being funded. There is no entitlement — a program you qualify for can still say no. |
| OffsetNon-refundable1 program | Neither paid out nor sellable. It reduces tax you owe in that state, and nothing more. | Worth nothing if you owe nothing there. A production that shoots and leaves usually has little or no liability in the state, so most of the face value is unrealisable. The estimator discounts it accordingly rather than treating it as cash. |
Non-refundable, non-transferable credits offset that state's own corporate tax and nothing else. If your production company has no ongoing tax liability in the state — and most visiting productions do not — the credit is worth nothing to you. Tennessee's Entertainment Job Tax Credit and Montana's post credit both work this way. Tennessee's is listed in the Program Guide as a secondary program and deliberately excluded from the ranking. Montana's is modeled, but the agency has paused applications until 2031, so it cannot rank while paused.
Programs do not pay on your budget. They pay on qualified in-state spend, and the definition varies enough to move a comparison by ten points. The estimator works in AICP sections so it can apply a different rate to each kind of spend.
| Bucket | AICP | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Crew labor | A · B · G · W | Prep, shoot and art department wages, plus editorial labor. |
| Director | L | Director's fee and creative development. Above the line. |
| Talent | M | SAG principals, VO, extras, fitting fees. Above the line. |
| Services | C · D · F · K · Q–X | Vendor fees — location, studio, prep/wrap, and all post. |
| Goods | E · H · I · J | Props, wardrobe, art materials, equipment rental, media. |
California's Program 4.0 pays on below-the-line spend only — director, producer, writer and performer compensation earn nothing. On a budget where above-the-line is a third of the cost, a 35% BTL-only credit behaves like a 23% credit. New York removed its above-the-line cap in the 2025–26 budget and now pays on it in full, which is a genuine change from how New York worked for years.
Most programs stop counting an individual's compensation above a ceiling — commonly $500,000. Georgia, Maryland and Arkansas cap at $500,000 per person; Massachusetts, Virginia, Texas, South Carolina, Colorado and Kentucky at $1M; Nevada at $750,000; Wisconsin at $250,000; Maine at $50,000. Illinois caps only non-residents, at $500,000. Tennessee caps residents at $500,000 and non-residents at $250,000. New York and Louisiana have both removed theirs. Fourteen of the programs modeled here carry a ceiling, and the estimator applies it: the director fee is one person, the talent line is split across the Principal Cast input, and crew follows the wage distribution. This never affects a commercial and frequently affects a feature with a name cast — a $3M director fee in Georgia earns credit on $500,000 of it.
Three programs step their rate with the size of the spend rather than paying flat: Connecticut (10 / 15 / 30%), Arizona (17.5 / 18.5 / 20%) and Texas (5 / 10 / 22.5 / 25%). A budget just under a tier boundary is worth re-cutting.
Nine programs across eight states pay their headline rate only on bona fide residents of that state, and a lower rate on crew you fly in. This is the single most common way a headline rate misleads.
| Program | Resident | Non-resident |
|---|---|---|
| Louisiana | 40% | 25% — fifteen points |
| Oklahoma | 30% | 20% |
| District of Columbia | 30% | 10% — the steepest premium in the country |
| Illinois · Mississippi · Montana · South Carolina · Nevada | Five to ten points of resident premium each | |
Two related gates are worth knowing because they are pass/fail rather than sliding. Colorado requires at least half your cast and crew to be Colorado residents; miss it and you get nothing at all. Nevada requires 60% of the total budget to be spent in state. Neither is an uplift you can partly earn.
Where crew or talent are paid through loan-out companies, most states require those companies to register locally and withhold — Georgia at 5.75%, Kentucky at 3.5%. It is a real cash cost and an administrative one, and forgetting it can disqualify the spend entirely.
Three different ceilings can cut a credit, and they behave nothing alike.
The total the state will issue in a year. Thirteen of the fifty-seven programs modeled here are uncapped; the rest compete. A cap only matters relative to demand — Georgia is uncapped and New Mexico's $130M is rarely exhausted, but Nebraska's entire annual allocation is $500,000, which one mid-size production absorbs. The estimator carries an availability judgement per program, shown as Generally available, Apply early, Competitive or Very limited.
A ceiling on what any single production can earn — and the one most likely to quietly ruin an estimate, because it is invisible until your budget crosses it.
CAPPED and shows what the credit would have been uncapped.
Programs expire. Iowa's is a two-year pilot ending 30 June 2027; Indiana's runs to 1 July 2031; California's Program 4.0 sunsets 30 June 2030. For anything delivering past a sunset date, confirm reauthorisation before you build a bid on it.
This is the step most incentive tables skip, and it is where the ranking is actually decided. A credit certificate is not money. Four things stand between the two.
Liquidity is what a credit sells for. Georgia's market is the deepest in the country at 90–92¢ because there are many Georgia taxpayers who want the paper. Thin markets are punishing: US Virgin Islands credits transfer only to Virgin Islands taxpayers and clear around 60¢, so a 17% credit there nets about ten points.
Time costs money. Present-value discounting at your cost of capital is why New York's 24-month payout ranks below faster programs paying the same rate, and why cash rebates punch above their headline.
The credit is one line in a comparison. Moving a production changes four other numbers, and the estimator nets all of them against the credit before it ranks anything.
| Cost | Why it moves |
|---|---|
| Sales tax | Applies to goods (E/H/I/J), not vendor services. Many production states exempt production purchases entirely — worth several points on an equipment-heavy budget, and invisible on a rate table. |
| Vendor cost | Goods and services genuinely cost different amounts in different places. Measured per AICP section against BEA regional price parity, using the services and goods components rather than the all-items index, which is dominated by housing a production does not buy. |
| Payroll burden | Employer taxes vary by state and — because SUI and FUTA are capped per person — the effective rate falls as average wage rises, at a different speed everywhere. Frequently larger than the sales tax difference. |
| Travel | The thinner the local crew market, the more people you fly and house. This is what makes a high rate in a shallow market a bad deal. |
City, county and tribal programs often stack on top of the state award. Duluth's 25–30% on top of Minnesota's 25% clears 50% combined on a $10,000 minimum. The Program Guide lists all of these; the estimator names them but never prices them in, because discretionary local funds publish no liquidity, timing or audit data and a guess dressed as a number is worse than an honest gap.
In this order, because each question can end the enquiry: