Major Hollywood studios and unions have partnered with “special ambassadors” Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone to ask that Pres. Donald Trump consider backing their bid for further tax incentives for film and television productions.
In a letter to the president on Monday, Voight, Stallone and a lengthy list of industry players including the Motion Picture Association, producers’ groups and top industry labor organizations called for Trump to support their efforts to include Hollywood-friendly tax measures in a reconciliation package being put together in Congress.
The letter notably did not mention tariffs, which Trump advocated for in a caps lock-laden social-media post on May 4.
The letter specifically advocated for the package to revive Section 199 of the Internal Revenue Code, which once allowed film and TV productions to be eligible for a tax deduction as a form of “domestic manufacturing.” The letter stated that the signatories “strongly support” Trump’s proposal to institute a reduced, 15 percent corporate tax rate for domestic manufacturing work.
The industry stakeholders also wrote that they support extending and expanding Section 181, a decades-old provision allowing a certain amount of film and television production expenses to be tax deductible. The current limit on deductible expenses is $15 million, but the groups are asking for $30 million “or up to $40 million if produced in low-income or economically distressed areas.”
The signatories additionally proposed returning Section 461 to the Internal Revenue Code which, during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowed businesses to spread net operating losses across five years. The authors argued that film production companies face major risk in financing projects that may be huge hits or massive flops and could benefit from using “profitable years to offset later losses, resulting in greater financial stability.”
The letter clearly aims to strike while the iron is hot, coming just over a week after Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he aimed to institute “100% tariffs” on films produced overseas. Though the White House later tempered that statement, saying “no final decisions” have been made, industry leaders scrambled to respond in the days following.
On May 5, Voight went public in the days with a detailed plan to “make Hollywood great again,” presented to Trump the same weekend that the president tweeted about tariffs. The plan, produced after lengthy discussions with industry leaders, called for tariffs in “limited circumstances” but also for tax incentives, tax code changes, infrastructure subsidies and co-production treaties.
On Friday, studio executives huddled with MPA chair-CEO Charles Rivkin to discuss the developing situation. The MPA has yet to officially comment on the tariffs idea.
Beyond Voight, Stallone and the MPA, the Directors Guild of America, IATSE, SAG-AFTRA, Teamsters, Writers Guild of America West and East, Independent Film & Television Alliance, Producers Guild of America, Producers United and Film USA signed on to the statement.
While these signatories pushed for incentives as a means of providing immediate relief to productions considering a U.S.-based shoot, they noted that the issue of runaway production will take more than some tax code changes to solve.
Stated the letter, “Returning more production to the United States will require a national approach and broad-based policy solutions, including those we propose below as well as longer term initiatives such as implementing a federal film and television tax incentive.”
