Indiana Film Tax Credit Incentive SEA 306: The Transferable Credit That Could Transform Hoosier Hollywood
For years, Indiana’s film industry operated under a fundamental disadvantage: the state had no competitive financial incentive to attract productions. While Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Texas built multi-billion-dollar production economies on the back of aggressive tax credit programs, Indiana relied on its locations, its affordability, and the persistence of local filmmakers who made movies despite the economics rather than because of them. Senate Enrolled Act 306, signed by Governor Mike Braun in 2025, represents the most significant shift in Indiana’s film incentive landscape in over a decade making the state’s film and media tax credit transferable for the first time and signaling that the legislature is finally ready to compete. For anyone working in the Indiana market from studio operators to freelancers providing Indianapolis videographer services understanding the Indiana film tax credit incentive SEA 306 is essential to planning for what comes next.
What SEA 306 Changed
Indiana’s film and media tax credit was originally established by a 2022 statute, but that initial version had a critical limitation: the credit was non-transferable, meaning it could only be used by companies with existing Indiana tax liability. For out-of-state production companies which is to say, virtually every major film and television producer the credit was functionally worthless. A production company incorporated in California or New York had no Indiana income tax obligation to offset, making the incentive irrelevant to the very companies Indiana most needed to attract.
SEA 306, which passed during the 2025 legislative session with bipartisan support, solved this problem by making the credit transferable. Eligible production companies can now assign unused tax credits to other Indiana taxpayers businesses, individuals, or entities with Indiana tax liability who can use the credits to reduce their own obligations. Each credit may be assigned only once and cannot be reassigned, but the transferability mechanism creates a market for the credits that gives them real cash value to out-of-state producers. This is the same mechanism that has driven production booms in Georgia, Massachusetts, and other leading incentive states.
The Credit Structure
The Indiana Film and Media Tax Credit offers a base incentive of 20 percent on qualified production expenditures, with opportunities for additional percentage bonuses that can bring the total credit to 30 percent. The additional five percent for hiring Indiana residents encourages local workforce development. A further five percent bonus is available when productions include Indiana branding in their final project a provision designed to ensure that the state receives promotional value from the productions it subsidizes.
Eligible productions include feature-length films (both independent and studio productions), documentaries, television episodic series, television programs and features, music productions, and digital media productions intended for reasonable commercial exploitation. The credit is administered by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), which evaluates applications on their individual merits only projects the IEDC expects to have a positive return on investment will be approved.
The Caps: Modest but Strategic
The most significant limitation of Indiana’s updated credit is its cap structure. Individual projects are capped at $250,000 in credits, and the total statewide annual cap is $2 million. The program runs from January 1, 2026, through July 1, 2031. These figures are modest by national standards Georgia has issued billions in film credits, Massachusetts issued $92.8 million in a single year, and even Texas committed $1.5 billion over ten years. Indiana’s $2 million annual cap means the program can support a limited number of productions before exhausting its allocation.
However, the cap structure reflects a deliberate strategy: demonstrate the program’s value with a controlled investment, build legislative confidence through measurable returns, and then expand the program based on results. Film commissioner advocates like Teresa Sabatine and local filmmakers like Rocky Walls of 12 Stars Media view SEA 306 as a foundation rather than a ceiling. As Walls has noted, the bill represents a great step in the right direction, but continued growth and evolution will be needed to make the incentives readily available for a wider variety of projects.
The Angelo Pizzo Factor
The political momentum behind SEA 306 was bolstered by the advocacy of Angelo Pizzo, the Bloomington-raised screenwriter and producer behind two of the most iconic American sports films ever made: “Hoosiers” (1986) and “Rudy” (1993). Pizzo’s involvement in lobbying for Indiana film incentives carried symbolic weight that no economic study could match here was the man who had written the definitive cinematic celebrations of Indiana identity, telling legislators that he could no longer practically make films in his home state because the financial incentives existed elsewhere.
Governor Braun’s ceremonial signing of SEA 306 took place on a soundstage at Huntington University, where digital media arts students had constructed a set with the state seal for the event a visual metaphor for the program’s aspiration to blend education, infrastructure, and production incentives into a functioning creative economy. The signing location was deliberate: Huntington University’s digital media program represents exactly the kind of educational pipeline that a growing production market needs.
What Producers Should Know
The updated credit takes effect January 1, 2026, for taxable years beginning after December 31, 2025. Productions interested in filming in Indiana should contact the IEDC directly for application information, as the program is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Local filmmaker Jeff Clark of Forester Films, who has raised approximately $2 million to produce three feature-length motion pictures in Indiana, has described the transferable credit as already transforming financing conversations investors respond favorably when they learn a transferable tax credit is available.
For the Indianapolis film community, SEA 306 represents a proof-of-concept moment. If the program demonstrates positive economic returns during its initial five-year window, the case for expanding the caps and extending the timeline becomes significantly stronger. The precedent from every other state that has implemented film incentives is clear: modest programs that produce measurable results tend to grow. Indiana is late to the game, but the game is far from over.
