Sen. Tim Scott touts federal film tax credit as a blue

Touting his love for movies, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said he decided to co-sponsor legislation to create a federal film and television tax credit because it would help boost U.S. blue-collar jobs and provide more diversity in how America is portrayed on screen.

Scott is leading the legislative effort in the U.S. Senate alongside Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), while a parallel bipartisan coalition is pushing for the bill in the U.S. House of Representatives. Scott said the goal is to get the bill passed during this Congress.

The bill, known as the Motion Picture, Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act, would establish a 20% tax credit on U.S. labor costs for film and TV projects that shoot 75% of their principal photography days in America and have a total production budget of more than $1 million.

The bill also provides bonus credits for independent productions, as well as projects that film in federally-declared disaster areas or rural qualified opportunity zones, which Scott said would include parts of South Carolina.

Today, the Palmetto State has 7,000 film production jobs, though a total of 17,000 jobs touch the film and TV industry when considering the effect on local small businesses, he said.

“The actors, the talent at that level, they get paid no matter where the films are made,” Scott told reporters during a Wednesday morning news conference. “But the people who don’t get paid are those construction workers, the caterers, the costume designers and the makeup artists. Those folks ... they don’t get paid unless it’s done here at home.”

Scott has long had an interest in film. On Wednesday, he said one of his first jobs was working at a movie theater and over the course of seven years, he saw such films as “Rocky III,” “An Officer and a Gentleman” and “Return of the Jedi.”

Even today, he said he goes to the cinema regularly and watches a wide variety of films and TV shows ranging from Taylor Sheridan’s “Lioness” and “Yellowstone” to the “Fast & Furious” movies, “Daniel and the Fiery Furnace” and even Hallmark movies with his mother.

As a Charleston City Council member and later a state legislator, Scott said he worked on ways to bring more production to South Carolina, though he noted that neighboring states like Louisiana and Georgia were more successful with their tax credit programs.

Films like 1994’s “Forrest Gump,” 2003’s “Radio” and the 2004 romance “The Notebook” were all filmed in South Carolina — the latter of which Scott said was his favorite movie shot in state.

He emphasized that the federal tax credit bill would help boost jobs nationwide. He named production hubs across the country, from Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson’s plans to invest $124 million in a Louisiana facility to Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta, which Scott said was “consistently empty” due to competitive tax incentives in other countries.

He said this would not be “a bill for one state,” adding that he wouldn’t be part of the effort if that were the case.

“We also get to export American values through film,” Scott said. “That’s one of the reasons why I celebrate the diversity of production and locations because it does provide multiple voices sharing their perspective on who we are as a country through film.”