More Taxes for Movies and TV

by Tom Yamachika, President, Tax Foundation Hawaii

We have been railing for some weeks now about the goings-on at our Legislature. This week we spotlight the Department of Taxation.

On February 16th, the Department published a Tax Information Release, a public statement of interpretation of the law, relating to the TV and movie production industry. To understand that release, we need to go into a little background first.

When we see Hawaii’s General Excise Tax or GET, it is usually on a sales receipt and the tax shown is 4.712% or 4.166%, depending on the island you are on. That rate is driven by what we call the retail tax rate, which is applied to sales from a seller to an end user.

The GET also is applied to intermediate stage products and services, namely those that are sold not to an end user but to a retailer, or someone further up the production chain. For example, consider a farmer selling vegetables to a market, or a fashion designer selling artwork to a manufacturer who will be making aloha shirts with that artwork. There, the GET is imposed at the “wholesale rate” of 0.5% instead.

When movie and TV productions are made, not all of the people participating in the production are on the payroll. A few, such as principal cast, the director, and others in key roles like the director of photography, are independent contractors to the production. Many of them have entities they own, known as “loan-out entities,” which then contract out to the production.

What, then, is the GET rate that applies when a loan-out entity is paid by the production company?

In 2008, the Department of Taxation published proposed rules containing several key GET interpretations. In Proposed Admin. Rule sections 18-237-13-01.01(b) and 18-237-13(6)-10(b), which appeared in Tax Information Release 2008-02, the Department said that a production company is in the business of manufacturing, and a loan-out entity providing services to the production company qualified for the 0.5% wholesale rate. The proposed rules were re-proposed in modified form in Tax Information Release 2009-05, but in the same proposed rule sections the Department reaffirmed that the GET interpretations above were still good and could be relied upon by taxpayers.

During the next ten years, the Department decided not to finalize these proposed rules, instead publishing revised temporary rules that only addressed the income tax credit for productions and did not include any GET rules. After finalizing the rules, the Department published an Announcement in November 2019 ostensibly to summarize the rules that were adopted, but it added a note, seemingly out of right field, saying that a “production company is not considered to be in the business of ‘manufacturing’ [for GET purposes].”

Tax Information Release 2021-01, the interpretation published on February 16, explains that “the Department reviewed its position on deeming a motion picture or television film production company to be engaged in the business of manufacturing. Through this review, the Department determined that this prior position was inappropriate.” In other words, the Department changed its mind, and loan-out entities are now taxable at the full retail GET rate. Neither the Release nor the prior announcement showed any reasoning from the applicable law (which did not change in the meantime) even attempting to justify the Department’s about-face.

“I am altering the deal,” the Department is effectively saying. “Pray I don’t alter it any further.”

Folks, this is Hawaii, not “The Empire Strikes Back.” The Department is given authority to make published pronouncements and adopt rules so people know and can plan business activities that follow the law. If the law changes because of legislative action or a court decision, that’s one thing. Or if the Department made a mistake in coming to its earlier ruling and can explain what the mistake was and why it was wrong, maybe that is okay as well. But changing the rules in midstream just because someone feels like it sends the message that the Department can act arbitrarily. We need our government to keep its word, give adequate notice of any material changes, and rein in any Vaderesque action.