Parafiscal levy

Colombia’s is the working example, and it is the only main film fund in this course’s dossier that is not financed out of general taxation. Ley 814 de 2003, Article 5, charges three parties at three rates: 8.5 percent on exhibitors, on net ticket income after the distributor’s and producer’s shares come out; 8.5 percent on distributors of films that are not Colombian; and 5 percent on Colombian producers, on their net income from exhibition. Article 7 makes it payable monthly and hands audit, assessment, penalties and coercive collection to the national tax authority.

Two features of the design are worth copying into any Philippine version of the argument. Foreign films pay more than domestic ones, so the levy is mildly protective by construction rather than by a separate quota. And the industry funds itself, which means the fund does not spend every budget cycle competing against hospitals and schools for a line item.

It is not the same instrument as a ticket levy, which charges the audience a slice of the admission price. This charges the trade on its net income. And it still needs what a community cannot supply: statutory compulsion, a legislature to enact it, and a revenue authority willing to chase people who do not pay.

Source: Ley 814 de 2003, enacted 2 July 2003, full text free at https://www.funcionpublica.gov.co/eva/gestornormativo/norma.php?i=8796 , Articles 5, 7, 9, 10 and 16. Retrieved in full and summarised in Case 5(b) of the Film industry playbooks research map, which selected Colombia over Iceland, Morocco, Thailand and Chile for exactly this reason. The outcome data attributed to Proimágenes is secondary in that file, because the Proimágenes site does not resolve from the research environment, so the mechanism is strong and the results are flagged.

First used in: 4.3 · Five countries, five different answers