Motion Picture Incentive Program review highlights three funding buckets and measured returns

The Legislative Fiscal Analyst’s Office and the Utah Film Commission told the Economic and Community Development Appropriation Subcommittee on Oct. 14, 2025, that Utah’s Motion Picture Incentive Program currently operates in three funding buckets and returns different measures of value depending on how return is calculated.

The program matters because it is funded by ongoing and one‑time appropriations and because legislators have cited competing policy goals — economic development, direct benefit to rural communities and support for a state cultural brand — when deciding whether to continue or change the incentives.

Jared Gibbs, a staff economist with the Legislative Fiscal Analyst’s Office, opened the presentation with a brief legislative history and a summary of the program’s structure. He said the program now consists of: (1) a cash rebate account funded by an ongoing $1.5 million appropriation to the motion picture incentive restricted account; (2) a general refundable income tax credit line fixed in statute at $6.8 million annually; and (3) a rural refundable income tax credit program whose funding is subject to appropriation. Gibbs said the rural program most recently had a $1 million ongoing authorization plus $11 million one‑time authorizations for fiscal years 2025 and 2026, producing a combined program of roughly $20 million.

Gibbs explained how analysts evaluate incentives by estimating “additionality” — the share of activity that would not have occurred without the incentive. "The idea of providing a tax incentive for anything is to change behavior," he said, and added that additionality sits on a spectrum between 0 percent (incentive had no effect) and 100 percent (activity only occurred because of the incentive).

Nut graf — why this matters

The Utah program is small by national standards but uses public funds. The subcommittee must weigh the legislature’s policy priorities — maximizing revenue, promoting rural economies, or supporting the state’s film brand — against empirical measures of return and the program’s budgetary cost.

Measured activity and return

Gibbs presented year‑by‑year counts showing roughly 15–30 incentivized productions per year and two measures of return. The first, an economic activity measure described as “dollars left in the state” (a statutory term Gibbs said represents taxable economic activity), averages roughly $4 to $6 of verified in‑state spending for each dollar of incentive awarded. The second, a tax‑revenue measure, indicates incentivized productions return about 15–30 cents in state tax revenue for each dollar of incentive, depending on the years and revenue streams included.

Gibbs cautioned that both measures vary year to year because of market conditions and program changes. He noted the COVID period produced visible dips and variance in the series.

Film commission context and rural program outcomes

Virginia, a representative of the Utah Film Commission, gave broader industry context and a longer history of film activity in Utah. She said the commission tracks several program outputs: the number of projects approved, verified spending, county distribution and production days. Key figures cited by the commission during the presentation included:

- Since fiscal year 2023 the commission reported approving 86 projects across the three programs and tracking roughly $72 million in incentive awards tied to an estimated statewide economic impact of $321 million (some recently approved projects remained in production and were reported as estimates).
- The rural film incentive (established in 2022) had approved 28 projects through the most recent reporting period and the commission said those projects generated more than $200 million in local spending and operated in 28 of 29 counties.
- The commission reported an increase in rural production days (an average of 279 days in recent years vs. 98 days in 2021), which the commission used to argue the rural program had redirected production toward non‑urban counties.

Virginia and Jared both emphasized the commission’s efforts to collect verified, CPA‑audited spending (the basis for rebates) and the difference between producers’ initial estimated spending and later verified numbers.

Options for the legislature

Gibbs outlined options that match different legislative priorities: reduce or eliminate program elements if the priority is maximizing revenue; convert or consolidate credit types, tighten eligibility, or make credits nonrefundable to focus benefits on rural communities; or reauthorize current funding levels to sustain the cultural/branding objective.

Gibbs said one automatic outcome of taking no action would be the lapse of the $11 million annual one‑time authorization for the rural credits, which he characterized as roughly a 50 percent cut to the program’s recent size if the legislature did not reappropriate those funds.

Questions and limits of the data

Committee members asked whether analysts could quantify additionality for individual productions. Gibbs said that estimating additionality requires production‑specific information and that the Legislative Fiscal Analyst’s Office did not have a comprehensive causal measure; he said the Film Commission maintains production‑level data that could inform such an analysis.

Virginia said commissions and local partners also track qualitative and local economic effects — hotel stays, vendor purchases and film tourism — and cited recent productions (for example, a brief Marvel production noted as Thornton/Thunderbolts footage, a Steve Carell production that spent about $8.6 million in state production days, and larger projects that the commission said spread spending over many counties) as examples of how different productions yield different local impacts.

Ending and next steps

The presenters left the committee with fiscal and policy tradeoffs: measured economic impact per dollar is materially higher than tax revenue returned per dollar, and program design choices (refundability, eligibility, distribution across rural versus urban areas) would change the program’s beneficiaries and budgetary cost. The Film Commission planned to present additional materials after the LFA report at the same meeting. The subcommittee did not make a policy decision at this hearing.