Wisconsin Economic Incentives For The Film & Television Industry

1. An investment tax credit of 25% that can be claimed for investing in Wisconsin based productions

2. A comprehensive sales and use tax exemption for machinery, equipment and services used in production and post -production. A 0% tax for all film and television services contracted by out of state production companies.

3. A refundable tax credit of 25% of direct production expenditures for feature films, television movies, episodic and mini-series television, video games and broadcast advertising production.

4. A 15% state income tax credit for film, television and electronic game production businesses who make a capital investment by starting a business in Wisconsin.

5. Further incentives are available on a city-by-city basis including the use of State owned buildings and locations free of charge as available, no fees for permits, a dedicated "traffic control" Police Unit during daylight hours at no cost and internal accounting reports on verification of incentive savings to the production company. In many cases local "Visitors & Convention" bureaus have created special "Industry Rates" for hotel rooms that will be based on "room nights" for each production, including local hotel occupancy tax in their flat room rates to the individual production.

Wisconsin Incentives Update as of March 2008

Download the Wisconsin Film Tax Credit Program PDF here: Download PDF Version

Wisconsin's 25% Film Tax Credit Program provides two types of tax credits:
- FILM PRODUCTION SERVICES CREDIT provides tax credits for salary & wages of Wisconsin residents, production expenditures and sales tax. To qualify, the production must be pre-accredited by the department.

- FILM PRODUCTION COMPANY INVESTMENT CREDIT provides credits to film production companies doing business in Wisconsin of up to 15% of expenditures for tangible personal property and for the purchase, construction, rehabilitation, remodeling or repair of real property used for film production.

Tax Incentive Documents/Links

- http://filmwisconsin.net/Incentives/
- Full Incentive Rules (PDF)
- WI ACT 483 (PDF)
- Film Tax Credit Application Manual (PDF)