ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

10 years, 8 months ago - Fleur Disney

Thanks everyone. Paddy, what are the other finance routes that are incompatible with EIS please? I appreciate that for the investors to get any benefit tax-wise they need to be prepared to wait, but I'm only using this as inducement to invest at all. Thanks everyone - and Gerard, 'wide-eyed and open minded' is my new favourite phrase :-)

10 years, 8 months ago - Abid Khan

Does anyone recommend a good Film Accountants? I prefer to go on recommendations rather than Google search results. Thanks

10 years, 8 months ago - Ryan Hooper

I made a film about the use of EIS or SEIS in a low budget horror film called Panic Button - doesn't give tax advice but does have interviews with a lawyer and some angel investors https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LO3U7LWjswU

10 years, 8 months ago - Gerard Gray

Re the EIS, talk to a specialist media accountant or someone who has gone thru the process. I know of 2 filmmakers that have made a success of these schemes but like anything, it's not - and shouldn't be- easy. Be wide eyed and open minded.

10 years, 8 months ago - Alève Mine

Paddy, quite likely yes, anything else?

10 years, 8 months ago - John Lubran

As ever everyone and their projects have unique circumstances applying. If one of these government schemes offers the difference between being able to make ones film or not making it then clearly it may well be the way to go. However it's still a convoluted entanglement that many of us would make the effort to avoid.

10 years, 8 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

Hi, you'll find that companies like Ingenious will decline to invest/cashflow you if your UPV is set up as an EIS.

10 years, 8 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

Alève, I think it's promoted mostly by people who are in the business of selling dreams and hope at seminars rather than making feature films.

10 years, 8 months ago - Tony Oldham

One of the top UK film accountancy specialists for film were Tenon, however, the majority of their film team moved to Saffery Champness. They used to host a BFI tent at Cannes every year. These are some of the top people in the UK for film finance and so forth doing a lot of sale & leaseback work and so on. My contact was a guy called James Bramsdon, but I would pre-warn you not to get into this unless you are well financed. Fees are high, but they are the main player in the UK.

10 years, 8 months ago - Marlom Tander

I actually spoke to the guy at HMRC about this.

He said that while lots film makers were keen on it, he thought that was because they didn't understand it. The likely film revenue cash flow clashes with the tax planning aspects of EIS.

It's all about the 3 year rule.

cheers

10 years, 8 months ago - John Lubran

A film project can be constructed as a business enterprise entity in a number of differing ways. EIS types of investment models exist within a paradigm created by the UK government through HMRC but it's not definitive of all possible paradigms. Investments in business enterprise can effectively amount to up to 100% tax relief in other constructions. The ways and means and networks required for entirely lawful operations that step outside of the artificial reality bubbles created by functionaries may not be easily available to conditioned mind sets but one should avoid taking one’s own reality as a generality. Information regarding these alternatives can also be found on the Internet but won't be anything like as easy to analyse as the sources planted there by businesses and agencies specialising in such singular reality assertions.

Most, though certainly not all, tax legislation is both lawful and legal but as with all law and legislation the devil is in the detail and the precise meaning of words. Two or more circumstances may be effectively the same in the real world but differ significantly within administrative legislation by little more than an alternative use of words, even though those words might imply that other specific requirements must be applied, which in the real world make very little difference.

This sort of business and financial structuring has long been a part of the methodology of very big business but for the most part there's no reason why such cannot be relied upon by anyone with the wit and the means. Indeed the Internet has been especially empowering with that sort of democratisation.

If one can relate to the grammar I've articulated here then one may be able to discern the existence of planets other than those asserted to be unique by what are in reality only second level powerful elites. To put it in biblical terms "let him with an ear hear and let him with an eye see"

10 years, 8 months ago - Parvez Zabier

' I am an exp film accountant and producer and
should be able to help. Contact me via SP.
regards Oarvez Zabier

10 years, 8 months ago - John Lubran

These schemes have been dreamed up by the sort of folks who aspire to work for government and HMRC; they all emanate from the incredibly onerous blunt instrument department excruciatingly designed to fulfill someones officious need to create entirely silly and unnecessarily convoluted webs of entanglement. The well established and quite ordinary business and commercial tax beneficial arrangements employed every day by actual entrepreneurs are better.

Fundamentally all investments in any enterprise are tax deductible over periods of 0 months to 60 months. In terms of profit taking in the happy event of such an outcome, dividends taken from a Limited Company together with a whole bunch of other tax benefits beat any of these absurd schemes and suffer far less onerous rules as well. Furthermore films need not be significantly subject to the regulations of any country. Just look at Amazon, Google that Coffee company and a great many others. "these are not the droids you are looking for"

10 years, 8 months ago - Alève Mine

Why is this scheme then that strongly promoted in indie filmmaking conferences/events?

"The incredibly onerous blunt instrument department excruciatingly designed to fulfill someones officious need to create entirely silly and unnecessarily convoluted webs of entanglement"
John, great formulation, worthy of Sir Humphrey :)

There must be another reason, though!

10 years, 8 months ago - Erich Schultz

There is a great deal of myth and garbage being posting in the answers above. Please do your own research, the Internet is full of actual information. The most important thing to understand is that EIS/SEIS is not a funding scheme, it offers tax relief (33% or 50% of investment) to high net worth private investors with huge tax bills. If you don't have any high net worth investors, EIS/SEIS will do you no good.

10 years, 8 months ago - Lee 'Wozy' Warren

Hey Ben Pickering :) Well done on your two movies. Where and when can we see them?

@wozyW

10 years, 8 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

EIS isn't necessarily the best bet - it's often touted as 'free money' (often by people who aren't actively making films TBH) but it's more complicated than that, and the benefits somewhat limited in the short term. Investors need to be very hands-off, and committing to 3+ years to get the tax advantages. Last 3 (and forthcoming 2) features I've had anything to do with did not use EIS. EIS is also incompatible with some other finance routes.

10 years, 8 months ago - Simon Bisset

http://www.chrisjonesblog.com/2013/02/how-to-get-your-film-funded-using-the-eis-and-seis-and-uk-film-tax-credit-podcast-with-ivan-clements.html

10 years, 8 months ago - Yen Rickeard

EIS is complicated. It means that investors MAY get money back on their investment - ie their investment in your film costs them less than you get. They still have to put up substantial amounts of money with little chance of getting any back (Sorry, no comment on you, it's statistics) BUT it doesn't work for YOUR money, or the money of anyone who has a 'substantial interest' in you or the film. That means relatives and associated members of your company. And then there is the 3 year aspect, and all the accountancy and proofs required. Although some of these you are going to get with any form of company structure.
The government run a start up business help scheme, whereby they give you an hour of an experts time on setting up your company. Talk to them. And registering for VAT means that you can claim back any VAT that you have to pay in advance.
Good luck with it.
Yen Rickeard

10 years, 8 months ago - Ben Pickering

Hi Fleur, put simply: the first two feature films I've had the honour and pleasure to direct would NEVER have been made without SEIS/EIS. The first was a £600,000 feature made using both schemes, the second a £200,000 one using just SEIS so far. It is an ESSENTIAL tool in the micro-to-low budget filmmakers' arsenal and while it's not a walk in the park anyone with the business head to be able to successfully produce a movie in the first place can get their head around it. So you don't need expensive lawyers or accountants to help you set it up. Yes there are various rules you have to abide by - the benefits don't apply to you or ascendants or descendants (cousins, aunties and uncles are a different story!) and the same applies to investors putting in more than 30% of the budget - but where else are you able to say to a potential investor they are only risking up to half of their money? Also the 3 year rule really isn't the end of the world - it takes that much time for the lifecycle of a film from preproduction to distribution anyway, so don't let that put you off, it's a bit of a red herring. As for accountants I'd recommend for undertaking the compliance side - Richard Juneman at media accountants Anderson & Pennington (www.andersonpennington.com) every time. Holler if you want to discuss some more... And good luck! Ben