OTHER: Canadian Tax Credits

[ptmcdevitt]

Hello there,

Could someone explain to me how Canadian tax credits work? I don't understand how people manage to get a budget of $50,000 - 100,000 for their projects. Are they giving out free money?

 

[craigbowman]

Tax credits for feature film production in Canada are issued both at the Federal level and Provincial. For example where I live for every dollar someone invests in one of my projects they get back sixty six cents. For people living in Vancouver making a film the tax credits would be only sixty cents on the dollar. Telefilm Canada has funding programs for feature projects which can easily exceed a million dollars.

The amount of paperwork is considerable but that's just part of movie making. Its no worse than going through co-production agreements, pre-sales deals or anything else like gap financing which involves lots of travel, foreign banks etc.

As for free money, nothing is ever what it seems but if you have a knack for knowing what you're doing you'll find that its a lot easier to raise sums of cash in excess of ten million than it is to raise a hundred grand.

The key is really to have a top entertainment law firm with the best people going to bat for you. Sure they bill you over 500/hr but you pay them out of all the money they help you get anyway. If every time someone gave you a hundred bucks you had to pay them five would you tell them to get lost? I doubt it.

My experience with most indie folks is they have all this technical knowledge with gear but when it comes to business and financial expertise, an area where they really should be focusing some elbow grease, they often come up short but not always.

There's a feature being shot in town here right now by a 22 year old kid with just under a million budget because he has the tenacity to write a proper business plan, produce a real budget, use a pen and fill out the forms.

 

[pixelated]

There's a feature being shot in town here right now by a 22 year old kid with just under a million budget because he has the tenacity to write a proper business plan, produce a real budget, use a pen and fill out the forms.

Love it ! You actually got me to google Kelowna :beer: