French Dubbing and the Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit
Dubbing locally means higher tax credits
You’re an Ontario producer working on a documentary, factual series or children’s show. You’ve pre-sold it in Quebec, and have to deliver in French. How do you make that happen? And how do you maximize your Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit?
You have two choices: send the project to a dubbing house in Montreal, drive up your non-Ontario costs, and lose out on thousands of dollars in tax credits, or you hire Power of Babel to do it in Ontario.
The most serious implication of going out of province for French versioning is that it could make your production ineligible for the Ontario tax credit. According to Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC) regulations, you can spend no more than 25% of your total budget outside the province.
But even if non-Ontario costs are not an issue, there is another reason to do your French translation and dubbing in the province: you could earn a significantly higher tax credit.
Want to know how much? Here’s how it breaks down.
You likely already know that the Ontario tax credit is 35% (or sometimes more) of Ontario labour costs. But of course, it’s not quite that simple.
When you hire a company, such as a post house or Power of Babel, you can claim that tax credit on up to 65% of our invoice – so that becomes 35% of 65%. (Confused yet? Let’s just say that when you hire a company, the amount you get back is 23% of what you pay for its services.)
But not all budget categories are counted in full. Labour is, but equipment and studio rental count at a much lower rate:
| Translation | 100% |
| Casting | 100% |
| Voice Recording / Dubbing | 100% |
| Sound Mix – Engineer | 100% |
| Sound Mix – Studio | 15% |
| Supers and Credits | 20% |
| Closed Captioning | 100% |
In other words, just 15% of the studio rental fee, and 20% of video post, counts towards your tax credit. But everything else – i.e. almost all of your versioning budget – counts at 100%. We maximize your eligibility by breaking down our invoice with as much detail as you need.
So, the bottom line is this: let’s say you’re producing a 26 x 8’ pre-school series, and your French versioning budget is $60,000. By doing your dubbing in Ontario, you can increase your tax credit by somewhere in the neighbourhood of $10,000-12,000. That’s money you’re leaving on the table if you do your French versioning out of province.