Lithuanian Tax Incentives for Film Production Raised to 30%
The New Year for Lithuanian Film Industry started on a good note - tax incentives were increased to 30% from January 2019.
The scheme was already introduced in 2014 with 20% cash rebate and proved to be very beneficial for the industry. It brought more than 20 international large scale projects, like the BBC drama series War and Peace, HBO‘s Chernobyl, one of the latest from Sky/HBO Catherine the Great featuring Helen Mirren and many other major productions, including the Tokyo Trial by Netflix. This mini drama series was filmed together with the Artbox Production team - and in 2017 it was nominated for an Emmy.
According to the Lithuanian Film Centre, last year was very successful for the film industry with the expenditure on production around €27 million. And it is expected that filming volume will keep rising in the next five years with tax incentives being valid until the end of 2023.
The scheme is being administrated by the Film Centre in Lithuania and is available for all the fiction films, TV series, documentaries and animation films both for foreign and local producers. Though it is necessary that at least 80% of the film production costs are incurred in Lithuania and the total spend must be more than €43,000.
"We are sure this tax incentive will help to attract more valuable and interesting projects to Lithuania and raise visibility of this northern European country within the filming industry," comments the team at Artbox.
