Incentivizing Oregon
Recent legislation offers a strong lure to film in the state
Oregon signaled it was serious about attracting production in 2022, when Gov. Kate Brown signed into law a bill significantly sweetening its incentives, officially known as the Oregon Production Investment Fund. This bill raised the base cash rebate on Oregon payroll for film and TV projects from 10% to 20%. If the producers are paying an aggregate of at least 6.2% in-state withholding taxes, the rebate gets bumped up to 26.2% under the Greenlight Oregon labor rebate program, established in 2005, which applies to salaries of both resident or non-resident employees, up to $1 million per person or entity.
Additionally, projects can now also get a 25% rebate on production-related goods and services purchased through in-state vendors, including loan-out corporations registered to do business in the state.
The amendment to the incentive also raised its budget cap 40%, to $20 million annually.
“The nice thing about our incentive is that it’s always been kind of modest, but we’ve been able to prove our worth to the policymakers, and they have gradually improved it as we’ve shown its value, and now it’s pretty competitive,” says David Allen Cress, producer of “Portlandia.”
To be eligible for the incentive under the OPIF program, a production must have a minimum of $1 million in qualified in-state expenditures. Projects spending less than $1 million but more than $75,000 can also qualify as a “local” OPIF (L-OPIF) if they are being produced by a local producer or production company and have a crew and a speaking cast that are at least 80% Oregon residents. There is also a “regional” OPIF (R-OPIF), which adds 10% to the cash rebate from the OPIF and L-OPIF programs after audit to any project that has one day more than 50% of its shooting days outside of Portland’s 30-mile production zone.
Visiting productions also enjoy a benefit available to all Oregonians: the state has no sales tax.