Delaware's Division of Small Business is accepting applications for the state's first film tax credit, a $10 million programme designed to put the First State on the production map for the first time.
The Delaware Entertainment and Production Tax Credit offers a 30 percent transferable credit for film, television, esports and video game productions spending more than $100,000 in the state over twelve months, according to the division's announcement. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis until the funds are committed, and each is evaluated against the programme's eligibility requirements before funding decisions.
'Governor Meyer has made clear that Delaware should compete for the investment and jobs that film and entertainment productions can bring to our state,' Division of Small Business director CJ Bell said in the announcement. Business manager Joe Zilcosky pointed to the state's compressed geography as a selling point: cities, small towns, farms, suburbs and beaches within roughly a ninety-minute drive, close to Washington, Philadelphia and New York.
Delaware is a late entrant in a field of more than thirty states running production incentives, and its pitch is different from Georgia's scale or California's depth: convenience, novelty and locations that have not been filmed to exhaustion.
Ten million dollars will not buy a studio industry. It can buy a first season of location managers telling the next production that Delaware was easy. In the incentive economy, that is precisely what a first credit is for.
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis until the $10 million is committed, at de.gov/film, the division said. For a programme in its first year, the queue itself is data: how many productions apply, at what budgets, will decide whether Delaware's legislature returns to enlarge the fund or lets the experiment stand as a pilot.
The credit is transferable, which lets productions without Delaware tax liability sell the credit and realise its value in cash, the mechanism that makes small-state programmes usable by visiting productions at all.
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