ATLANTA — The State of Georgia spent $1.35 billion on film tax credits in 2022, according to a new audit released on Thursday.
The report, prepared by a team at the Georgia State University Andrew Young School Fiscal Research Center, found the incentive "induces substantial economy activity" in the state.
It's also the "largest tax expenditure among Georgia's economic development incentives," the report said.
Georgia "loses money" on the benefit — something consistent with studies of other state film tax incentive programs.
"The productions come because the investment has been made in our community for the built environment," Fayette County Development Authority president and CEO Niki Vanderslice said. "If we don't have the productions, then we have large spaces that may go unused. "
She said a draft report looking at Fayette County specifically suggests the film industry brought $1.4 billion in economic activity to the county from 2018 to 2022, despite the pandemic. She worries that financial boost would vanish if the tax credit went away.
"A big piece of the reason that the industry has grown as much as it has is because of the tax credits," Vanderslice said. "In North Carolina, when they did away with their tax credits, it cut their industry in half. And so, I think that we would see at least 50% and probably greater than that go somewhere else."
The audit predicted Georgia will only get $0.19 back in the 2024 fiscal year for every dollar it invests in the film tax credit. That's an 81% loss.
"As a professional Georgian who pays taxes here, that terrifies me," said Jacquelyn Harn with Americans for Prosperity Georgia. "We don't need to provide unnecessary incentives at the expense of your Georgia taxpayers to get those businesses to do business here."
Harn said she'd rather see the money spent on something else that benefits more taxpayers.
"It's a billion dollars. Think about how much we can stimulate the economy if we gave that billion dollars back to Georgian taxpayers," she said. "Since we tout Georgia as being the number one state for business, we don't need to provide unnecessary incentives."