What Happens in Conference?

We're in the home stretch here...

The 5 senators and 5 representatives selected for the conference committee will meet, probably in a series of meetings till the end of next week, to try to resolve differences on HB1590. No testimony will be accepted at these meetings, so if you want to let the legislators know how you feel, now is the time to do it (see contact info in the posts below).

The senators and reps will use their latest respective drafts as a basis for discussion, but as you've already seen, anything can happen, so the conference draft (CD1) that could come out of this may be quite different than either draft. The latest House draft is HD2, and the latest Senate draft is SD2. Here are the main differences between the two:

Amount of Tax Credit
House: Blank (left open for discussion)
Senate: 15% for Oahu, 20% for neighbor islands, plus additional wage tax rebate (unnamed %) for Hawaii resident wages

Qualified Productions
House: Feature-length motion picture, short film, made-for-television movie, commercial, music video, print advertisement, magazine photography shoot, interactive game, television series pilot, television series up to twenty-two episodes, television special, or a single television episode that is not part of a television series regularly filmed or based in the state
Senate: Same as above, plus: sound recording

Minimum Hawaii Spending Requirement
House: $200K for film, television, digital media, & photography projects
Senate: Same as above, but $20K for sound recordings not related to film, TV, or digital media

Credit Cap
House: $8 million per qualified production
Senate: $1 per qualified production (amount purposely set low to allow for discussion)

Effective Dates
Both: Jan 1, 2005 (retroactive) to Dec 31, 2010

Other
The Senate draft includes additional provisions that aren't in the House draft:
*Amending High-Tech Business Investment Tax Credit (a.k.a. "Act 221" or "Act 215") to:
(1) Require performing arts companies claiming the credit to show proof of support for performing arts programs in Hawaii's schools
(2) Include "digital media" more explicitly in definition of "performing arts products"
*Requiring the Dept. of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism to:
(1) Develop an appropriate revenue generation and economic benefit model to determine the economic impact of the new tax credit
(2) Submit annual reports to the Legislature on film and digital media production expenditure, revenue projection, and revenue realization