Australian producers step up calls for removal of 20% cap on key tax rebate

Leading Australian producers are calling on the government to honour a 2024 promise to remove a financing blockage facing a growing number of independent feature projects.

The Producer Offset (PO) tax rebate allows up to 40 per cent of a feature’s production costs to be claimed back. However, above-the-line (ATL) costs, including fees to directors, producers, and principal actors, plus development expenditure, must be capped at 20 per cent of the total budget.

Minister Tony Burke, who has arts among his many portfolios, has promised to remove the cap, but the Treasury is yet to amend the relevant act of Parliament. Burke had also said the change would be applied retrospectively from 1 July 2024.

But producers said this is not good enough.

“No financier is going to accept that; it’s too uncertain, and the books get closed on a film,” said Causeway Films principal Kristina Ceyton, whose credits include Danny and Michael Philippou’s Talk To Me, Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, Goran Stolevski’s Of An Age, and Dario Russo’s highly-anticipated The Fox.

”We are being punished for success. There’s an urgency to this. Every month that goes by there’s an impact.”

A letter to Burke with some 20 signatories that…