• Home
  • News
    • Politics & Government
    • Business & Economy
    • Crime / Courts
    • Health / Medicine
  • Sports
    • High School Sports
    • Radio Iowa Poll
  • Affiliates
    • Affiliate Support Page
  • Contact Us
    • Reporters

Radio Iowa

Iowa's Radio News Network

You are here: Home / Crime / Courts / Four problems identified, on civil side, in film office flap

Four problems identified, on civil side, in film office flap

October 31, 2009 By O. Kay Henderson

The Iowa Attorney General’s chief of staff this week confirmed the state may file lawsuits to try to recover some of the $32 million in state tax credits that have already been awarded to film and TV productions.

Governor Culver suspended the tax credit program in September and fired the manager of the state film office.  Earlier this month, officials confirmed a criminal investigation was underway. But Eric Tabor — chief of staff for the state’s attorney general — this past week said there’s a side of this investigation that will be played out in civil court as well.

“There’s really four ways that we think the law was just ignored and inappropriately applied,” Tabor told a legislative panel this week. 

Tabor said the film office was “a complete mess” and while investigators are searching, it’s hard to find proper documentation for many of the film and TV tax credits.

“Of course, the way the program worked is after a movie was completed, the filmmakers would submit their qualified expenditures and get a tax credit,” Tabor said.  “What we found in most cases was that there was extremely poor documentation of those expenditures, in some cases just a spreadsheet with no documentation to back up that spreadsheet.” 

The second problem, according to Tabor, was that the only expenses that qualified for the state tax credits were payments to Iowa residents or Iowa-based businesses.

“We think in numerous cases the requirement for an Iowa-based business was skirted and was not followed at all,” Tabor said. 

The state tax credits were not just available for the salaries paid to Iowans who worked on the films and for the expenses incurred in the state, though.  The tax credits also were available for investors in the movies.

“The way the film office was supplying those credits, it ended up oftentimes in a 50 percent credit when we think that in many cases it should have been a whole lot less than 50 percent because they were not applying the investment tax credit provisions correctly,” Tabor said. 

According to Tabor, it’s hard to see how some of the film and TV productions which did receive state tax credits had any economic impact in Iowa.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Filed Under: Crime / Courts, Politics / Govt Tagged With: Chet Culver, Democratic Party, Legislature, Republican Party, Taxes

Featured Stories

Governor signs Iowa Renewable Fuels Standard into law

Jury returns guilty verdict in shooting death of State Trooper

A haboob, a dust storm black out, hits northwest Iowa

Summit has easements for 20% of carbon pipeline route through Iowa

Morel mushroom hunters on hold without warmer conditions

TwitterFacebook
Tweets by RadioIowa

Iowa’s Huckstorf garners national award

Iowa Special Olympics Summer games set to open in Ames

Radio Iowa/Baseball Coaches Association High School Poll 5/16/22

Iowa assistant coach Kirk Speraw to retire

Northern Iowa prepares for Missouri Valley Conference softball tournament

More Sports

eNews and Updates

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Archives

Copyright © 2022 · Learfield News & Ag, LLC