It additionally tightened guidelines governing how movie firms switch or promote unused tax credit to different companies, a standard apply for manufacturing teams that conduct a part of their movie-making work outdoors Georgia.

Georgia’s movie business took off after the state started providing beneficiant tax credit to lure productions. This system’s financial impression has soared from $242 million in 2007, the 12 months earlier than the Basic Meeting handed laws considerably growing the tax credit score, to a record-setting $four billion in direct spending in fiscal 2021.

However this system’s supporters have been placed on the defensive after two essential audits launched originally of 2020 discovered it had been poorly managed and known as into query the accuracy of fiscal impression estimates.

To deal with inadequate audit procedures, the income division has begun publishing an in depth guide for movie tax credit score audits, which incorporates agreed-upon procedures for use for any necessary audits, in accordance with a follow-up evaluation launched late final week.

Beneath the agreed-upon procedures, auditors should confirm all expenditures above $100,000 and choose a statistical pattern of these underneath $100,000 for testing.

The company additionally has taken steps to establish and disallow expenditures which are ineligible underneath the legislation or which have restricted financial profit to the state and up to date the guide and coaching supplies for tax examiners who course of the credit score.

The Georgia Division of Financial Growth has taken steps to exclude from the tax credit score initiatives not meant for multimarket industrial distribution, the evaluation discovered.

The 2020 audit concluded the company had broadly interpreted the legislation’s provisions, approving initiatives that may very well be thought of of native curiosity and stay occasions that doubtless would have taken place with out the credit score.

Each the income and financial growth departments agreed for probably the most half with the follow-up evaluation’s findings. Nonetheless, the financial growth company disagreed with a advice to require {that a} minimal share of productions happen inside Georgia.

The company indicated such a mandate “would exceed the authority delegated to it by the Georgia Basic Meeting contemplating the movie tax credit score … doesn’t require a minimal quantity of in-state capturing.”

This story is accessible via a information partnership with Capitol Beat Information Service, a mission of the Georgia Press Academic Basis.