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View from the Hill

Film incentives: Which counties benefited?

The film industry is pressuring North Carolina policymakers to continue providing tax incentives for production, tying them to economic growth.

North Carolina’s current film incentives offers productions costing more than $250,000 a 25 percent tax credit with a limit of $20 million per film production.

According to the North Carolina Department of Revenue, the state spent $69 million on film tax credits in 2012, more than double the $30 million amount it spent in 2011.

In addition, the incentives have largely gone to a select number of counties in the area, among which include the following:

  • In 2012, more than $9.7 million went to productions in Mecklenburg County like “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” “Homeland” and “The Bachelorette.” Other productions that were shot in Mecklenburg as well as other counties received more than $22 million in tax incentives.
  • Productions in New Hanover County received $2,701,834 in incentives. In addition, productions that were partially shot in New Hanover County received $43,160,071 for films like “The Occult” and “The Conjuring.”
  • Meanwhile, “A Long Way Off,” a film shot in Franklin, Wake and Orange County, collected $84,683 in tax incentives, while taxpayers gave NBC Universal $116,989 to shoot “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” last year.
introduced sponsored incentives

But it was former N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat, who enacted the current incentives plan. But a letter from the Motion Picture Association of America also highlights that Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker, who works in Republican Gov. Pat McCrory’s Administration, is a supporter of incentives. The debate goes beyond party lines and is more related to whether the money is spent in a way that spurs economic growth while not wasting taxpayer dollars.

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