Hollywood Unions Lobby Congress for More Funding to Restart

The Motion Picture Association and several other of Hollywood’s high guilds despatched a letter to congressional leaders on Monday asking for additional help for the leisure trade as the speed of infections in Los Angeles and far of the United States will increase.

The letter, obtained by TheWrap, was despatched by the MPA, Directors Guild of America, Independent Film & Television Alliance, IATSE and SAG-AFTRA and despatched to the House and Senate leaders of each events, in addition to the heads of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committee. In it, the guilds ask Congress to determine work alternative tax credit for employers who rehire employees they needed to lay off throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

The guilds additionally ask for a number of adjustments to the tax code for the leisure trade, together with increasing how a lot of the manufacturing price range on movie and TV initiatives could be counted as a deduction towards federal taxes. On a person degree, it was additionally requested for Congress to move the Performing Artist Tax Parity Act (HR 3121), which might enable performing artists with incomes of as much as $100,000 to deduct unreimbursed efficiency bills on their tax returns. The tax code at the moment permits for artists with incomes of below $16,000 to deduct bills based mostly on laws handed in 1986, however the guilds argue that the cap ought to be raised “to reflect the modern-day incomes of low-income and middle-class performing artists.”

In additon, the letter addresses a serious problem that has confronted all movie and TV productions which have tried to restart taking pictures: insurance coverage.

“The ability of our industry to return to active production, whether on set or on location, is severely compromised by the inability to purchase insurance to cover losses stemming from communicable diseases amongst cast, crew, and others involved in the production,” the letter states. While the MPA and the guilds shouldn’t have particular coverage requests on this matter, they ask Congress to “develop a program of federal insurance (or guarantee to fill this gap) to cover pandemic-related business losses in the future.”

Read the complete letter right here.