The head of the Czech AV Producers’ Association, Jan Sverak said:  “The tax incentives will continue under the present law next year despite the veto of the proposed new legislation.  The new law is more about the reorganization of the structure of funding than about any exact sum of money.

“Last year the amount for tax incentives was 300m CZK and next year will be about the same even if there is no change in the law.  We will not know the exact amount until next week when this is discussed in the government. 

The bill vetoed by the Czech president earlier this week would have established a new State Fund for Cinematography (SFC) as the main body for support of Czech film production, support, European co-productions, film festivals support, distribution, digitalization as well as the incentive scheme.

At present the Czech incentives depend on an unwieldy system that works on an annual basis which requires film productions to close their budgets at the end of the calendar year to benefit from the tax incentives.  Under the new law the incentives would be transferable from one year to the next to allow a continuous project.

Under the new bill half of funding would come from commercial television stations. Other features of the vetoed bill would have included a contribution of one percent on cinema tickets.

Czech industry professionals said they expected the parliament to override the veto by the Czech president and for the law to go ahead.

Speaking to FNE, Jana Cernik, head of development and training at the Czech Film Center (filmcenter.cz), added: "The Film Act outlines the sources for national film funding. That includes 1% from the sale of cinema tickets, 2% from advertising revenues from commercial TV stations, and equally small percentages from other TV
platforms.”