Georgia auditors asked lawmakers to name who gets film credits; four amendments since 2024 did not

Georgia’s Department of Audits and Accounts told the General Assembly that “The General Assembly should consider amending state law to require DOR to disclose the production company, production name, and credit amount for each project receiving the credit.”1 The amendment annotations to O.C.G.A. 48-7-40.26, the film credit statute, list four amendments from the 2024 through 2026 sessions — HB 1181, HB 475, SB 153 and HB 1268 — and none of the itemized edits adds a disclosure requirement, narrows nonresident wage treatment or imposes a ceiling.2,3,4 The same audit reported that “Of the 31 other states with a film tax credit or rebate, 23 states (74%) disclose company name and/or production name, and 20 states (65%) disclose incentive amounts received by each production.”5

That report also said lawmakers “should consider changing the credit’s provisions to reduce the credits allowed for out-of-state workers and service providers.”6 The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute cites report 23536 as the Department of Audits and Accounts Performance Audit Division report “Impact of the Georgia Film Tax Credit,” January 2020, and reproduces the state download link carrying the same report number, rid=23536.7,8 The report itself, as held here, gives no month on its face, saying only that “A report addressing the administration of the credit was released earlier this month.”9

According to the statutory annotations, the 2024 amendment, effective January 1, 2025, substituted “three years” for “five years” in one sentence of the carryforward paragraph.3,10 The 2025 amendment rewrote definitions to cover “paid subscription based platforms, free advertiser supported streaming television (FAST) channels” and “user-generated content distributed exclusively via social media platforms,” among other edits, and rewrote subsection (i).4,11 The current text of subsection (i) directs the Department of Economic Development to determine “through the promulgation of rules and regulations what projects qualify for the tax credits,” including “certification application deadlines, qualified project content types and distribution methods, certification application process and required supporting documentation, and certification application fees.”12 That text sets no disclosure duty, no cap and no nonresident wage limit.12,11 Whether a disclosure duty sits elsewhere in Title 48, or was enacted before 2024, was not checked by these records.2 The Department of Revenue does publish a document titled “Film Tax Credit - List of Expenditures (3-15-2023)”; these sources do not establish what that list contains or whether it names individual recipients and credit amounts.13

In a later tax incentive evaluation, report 30438, the Department of Audits and Accounts wrote that “The absence of caps or spending ceilings in Georgia is one of the incentive’s most notable features. There is currently no cap on qualifying expenditures for companies, nor is there an aggregate cap for annual or lifetime credit generation.”14,15 The statute does contain one aggregate cap, of $25 million, but only for qualified interactive entertainment production companies and their affiliates, and only for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2013 and before January 1, 2014.16 That later evaluation said individuals “paid through Form 1099, personal service contracts, or loan-outs are not subject to a salary cap, in contrast to some jurisdictions.”17 Production companies must withhold Georgia income tax at 5.75% on payments to loan-out companies, the same evaluation says.18

The state’s FY 2027 Tax Expenditure Report estimates the film tax credit’s total state cost at $532 million for FY 2025, $631 million for FY 2026 and $630 million for FY 2027.19,20,21 That report lists the data source for the film tax credit line as “DOR data for TY 2020,” the same source line the FY 2024 edition carried.22,23 The FY 2026 edition, which like the others is required by O.C.G.A. 45-12-75, said that “Because of the time lag in processing income tax returns, the most recent data available from the Georgia DOR was calendar year (CY) 2022,” and that “even in cases in which the Georgia DOR data is used as the primary data source, the tax expenditure costs presented in this report are estimates.”24,25 The figures are estimates, not measured claims against tax liability.25

The most advanced of the film credit bills identified in these records was House Bill 1180, which the Georgia House passed 131-34 on February 29, 2024, according to bill-tracking records of House Vote #609.26 Capitol Beat reported that the bill “would require film production companies to meet at least four of 10 criteria to qualify for an additional 10% income tax credit on top of the 20% base credit the General Assembly enacted in 2008.”27 Its chief sponsor, state Rep. Kasey Carpenter, R-Dalton, said: “This bill seeks to make this program sustainable,” Capitol Beat reported.28 The Senate read the bill a second time on March 21, 2024, according to the same bill-tracking records.29 The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute reported that “the Senate Rules Committee failed to advance HB 1180 for consideration by the full Senate,” and that a late substitute in SB 349 carrying film credit provisions was not taken up before adjournment.30,31

The reported cost of the credit has fallen rather than overrun: the auditors reported a “significant decline in credit generation in recent years, despite significant increases in project related activity,” which they attributed to “timing changes induced by HB 1037.”32 Credit generation and the Tax Expenditure Report’s cost estimates are different measures, and these records do not reconcile them.32,19 The same report cautions that approved and audited spending differ, noting a ratio above 30% “likely reflects differences in the spending initially approved by GDEcD and final (audited) expenditures submitted to DOR for credit generation.”33 The credit “may be used to offset Georgia tax liabilities for up to three years,” the report says, and “It is also transferable, and production businesses typically sell or assign credits to other taxpayers.”34

On the out-of-state spending the auditors wanted narrowed, a separate performance audit of the program’s administration reported that the Department of Revenue “noted its auditors had disallowed over $90 million in expenses (over $27 million in credits) since it began the film tax credit audit program in 2012.”35 At the time of that audit, “Most audits were voluntary, and projects that did not request one were unlikely to be audited. Only 12% of productions were audited.”36 Auditors also found “$3.8 million in expenditures that should have been disallowed during DOR audits.”37 Those three figures describe the program as it stood at that audit, and whether the audit coverage they describe still applies after HB 1037 is not established by these sources.36,32 In report 23536, the auditors wrote that “Mandatory audits of all productions would likely reduce ineligible out-of-state expenditures but would not eliminate them.”38

One alternative explanation — that a cap was enacted somewhere in the 2024 through 2026 sessions — is contradicted by the auditors’ own later evaluation, which describes the credit as having no cap of any kind as of that report.14,15

Method: this story lays two Department of Audits and Accounts documents — report 23536, which carries the recipient-disclosure and out-of-state-wage recommendations, and report 30438, a later tax incentive evaluation — against the amendment annotations and current text of O.C.G.A. 48-7-40.26 as published by Justia, covering the four amendments attributed to the 2024, 2025 and 2026 sessions; HB 1181 and HB 475 are described only through those annotations and the statute’s current text, and SB 153 and HB 1268, which the annotations list as code-revision acts, were checked only through the annotations, not full bill text.1,6,2,4,14 The January 2020 date for report 23536 rests on the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute’s citation of a Performance Audit Division report titled “Impact of the Georgia Film Tax Credit,” matched to the state download link carrying the same report number, rid=23536, on the same GBPI page; the report as held here does not state its own date.7,8,9 Dollar estimates come from the FY 2027 and FY 2024 Tax Expenditure Reports, bill history for HB 1180 from bill-tracking records of the 2023-2024 session, and the disallowed-expense figures from the performance audit of the program’s administration.19,23,26,35 The Clanker Times did not contact the Georgia Department of Economic Development, the Department of Revenue or the General Assembly for this story.39