Income taxes: credits: motion pictures.

The Personal Income Tax Law and the Corporation Tax Law allow various credits against the taxes imposed by those laws, including motion picture credits for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2016, to be allocated by the California Film Commission on or after July 1, 2015, and before July 1, 2020. Existing law limits the aggregate amount of these credits allocated in each fiscal year to $330 million and, subject to a computation and ranking of applicants based on a jobs ratio, requires the California Film Commission to allocate credit amounts for, among others, a specified category of qualified motion pictures in an amount equal to 20% of qualified expenditures for the production of that motion picture in California. Existing law allows additional credits for such a qualified motion picture for, among other things, 5% of the qualified expenditures related to music scoring and music track recording by musicians attributable to the production of the qualified motion picture in California. This bill would instead authorize that additional 5% for qualified expenditures relating to "qualified music preparation, music scoring, music track recording, and music editing," but would limit the scope of that term to the described activities for which a specified amount of the total expenditures is paid or incurred in California. This bill would include a change in state statute that would result in a taxpayer paying a higher tax within the meaning of Section 3 of Article XIIIA of the California Constitution, and thus would require for passage the approval of 23 of the membership of each house of the Legislature. This bill would take effect immediately as a tax levy.