Las Cruces drops film incentive idea

LAS CRUCES — A city plan to create a local film incentive program, designed to entice filmmakers to make movies here, has fallen apart, at least for now.

Under the proposal, the city would have paid 10 percent of “qualified expenses” to film production companies that spent at least $100,000 in the city. If it had been implemented, Las Cruces would have been the first city in New Mexico to offer such an incentive.

The incentive was to be funded from revenues produced by the city’s “hold-harmless” tax, a sales tax increase enacted to replace the city’s share of state gross receipts taxes in food and medicine, which the state eliminated in 2004.

But that’s where the city ran into a problem. City staff discovered that “hold harmless” taxes can only be used for capital expenditures, spending used to acquire physical assets, such as land, buildings and equipment.