How Much Can a Producer Actually Raise Under Section 181 or 168(k)?

A producer with a $6 million script and a cast attachment asked us last month what every producer eventually asks: “How much can I raise with these incentives?” He wanted a number. The honest answer is a formula with four variables, and this article walks through them in order: the deduction and the statutory caps on it, the investor’s tax rate, the valuation of the film, and the share of the savings an investor will actually pay for. The third one, valuation, is the key to the whole thing. It is the only limit that applies to every structure, it is the only limit at all under Section 168(k), and it is the one the market gets wrong most often.

First, One Distinction That Changes Everything

Before the variables, a definition, because almost every mistake producers make in this conversation comes from skipping it. A film has a budget, which is what it cost to make, and a value, which is what the finished picture is worth. Two of the three tax-advantaged structures run on the first number. One runs on the second.

Hold that distinction. It is why the same $5 million film produces a very different raise depending on the structure, and it is why Part 3 matters more than the caps in Part 1.

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The Deduction, and Where the Ceilings Come From

Three versions of the federal film deduction matter right now, and they have three different ceilings.

Section 181, as it existed through 2025. A production company, or an investor who owned the production, could expense the cost of a qualified film in the year the money was spent, up to an aggregate production cost of $15 million per film, or $20 million for films with significant spending in designated low-income or distressed areas (IRC §181(a)(2)). A $25 million film got a $15 million deduction, not a $25 million one. Section 181 expired on December 31, 2025.

Section 181 under the CREATE Act, if it passes. The CREATE Act (H.R. 4840 / S. 2530, introduced August 2025) would reinstate Section 181 through 2030 and double the caps to $30 million and $40 million, with inflation indexing. It has bipartisan sponsors and is still in committee. We expect to structure deals under it if it becomes law. Until then it is a bill, and a producer cannot raise money against a bill. (We have checked. Nobody wires against C-SPAN.)

Section 168(k) bonus depreciation, active today. As we explained in our 168(k) explainer, an investor who acquires a finished film before its commercial release can deduct 100% of its cost in the year it is placed in service. There is no dollar cap in the statute. The deduction is the price paid for the film, cash plus a recourse note (a loan the investor is personally on the hook for, repaid from the film’s revenue), and that price has to equal the film’s appraised fair market value. So the limit under 168(k) is not a number Congress wrote. It is the number an independent appraiser will sign.

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The Investor’s Rate

A deduction is worth whatever tax it displaces, and that depends entirely on whose return it lands on. Three investor profiles cover most of the people who write checks for independent film:

• The high earner. Salary, bonus, partnership income, or a business sale taxed as ordinary income. Top federal bracket: 37%. Every dollar of deduction saves 37 cents.
• The blended investor. Some ordinary income, some investment income. We use 30% throughout this article as an illustrative estimate, roughly where a high earner with meaningful investment income lands on their marginal dollars; the real rate is whatever their CPA says it is. This is the most common profile we see, and it is the one to plan around unless you know otherwise.
• The capital-gains investor. Income that is mostly long-term gains and qualified dividends: top rate 20%, plus the 3.8% net investment income tax, for 23.8%. Every dollar of deduction saves about 24 cents, and whether a film deduction can reach that income at all depends on the investor’s participation in the deal, which is a conversation for their CPA.

Multiply, and the ceilings become dollars.

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Valuation: The Limit That Applies to Everything

Here is the part of the conversation that separates a financing from a problem, and the reason we put the budget-versus-value distinction at the top of this article.

Under Section 181 the cap is a number in the statute, and underneath the cap the deduction is still bounded by what the film actually cost. Under Section 168(k) there is no statutory number at all, which makes people’s eyes light up in a way we have learned to recognize from across a conference table, and the only limit is the fair market value of the film as established by an independent appraisal. You cannot deduct more than the asset is worth. Overvaluing an asset in order to manufacture a deduction is not aggressive tax planning. It is an abusive tax shelter, the penalties are personal, and the appraiser, the promoter, and the investor all share in them.

What the appraiser is actually valuing deserves a paragraph, because it is the number your raise depends on. The appraiser is not grading your budget. They are valuing a finished film as an income-producing asset: the revenue it can reasonably be expected to earn across theatrical, streaming, television, and international licensing over the life of the copyright, discounted back to today. The inputs are things a producer controls. The cast. The genre and its sales history. The distribution path, and whether anyone credible is already in the conversation. Comparable titles. The quality of the finished cut. That is why a well-made $5 million film with real names and a distributor circling can appraise well above its cost, and why a $5 million film with no distribution plan and no recognizable cast may not. The $10 to $15 million range in this article assumes the first kind of film. If yours is the second, the honest answer is a smaller number, and you would rather hear it from an appraiser than from an examiner.

For a producer, the practical takeaway is simple. Your film is worth what it is worth. The deduction follows the value, not the other way around, and the structure you pick only changes whether a statutory cap sits on top of that value. Get the valuation right and every other number in this article falls into place. Get it wrong and none of the other numbers matter.

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How Much of the Savings an Investor Will Pay For

This is where producers most often get the math wrong, in both directions.

The maximum tax savings is not the amount you can raise. The tax savings are the hedge you are offering an investor against the risk of their investment. The investment itself has to be a real investment: a film with a credible plan to make money, a profit participation that is worth something, and an investor who expects to be paid out of revenue. A transaction entered into with no reasonable expectation of profit apart from the tax benefit is what the Code and the courts treat as an abusive tax shelter (IRC §7701(o), the economic substance doctrine). That is not a technicality. It is the line between a financing and a fraud.

So the investor’s cash has to be less than the maximum tax savings, and how much less is a negotiation. Take a film appraised at $10 million and a 37% investor under Section 168(k):

Every row is a real investor. Some want the 2x cushion and will not go higher. Some will fund the full $3.7 million on the logic that their cash is fully hedged by the savings and the profit participation is pure upside, provided they believe in the film. And nothing stops an investor from putting in more than the savings; the hedge simply covers less of their cash, and above break-even the position looks like ordinary equity with a tax cushion underneath it, which is exactly what it is. Where a given investor lands depends on their appetite, their tax picture, and how much they trust the project, which is why we do not quote a single number to producers. We quote a range, and the range starts in that table.

One real data point, from our own closings this year. Kaet Might Die was purchased ahead of its release by a group of four investors for $5.78 million: $1.4 million in cash at closing and a recourse purchase-money note for the $4.38 million balance. At a 37% rate, that cash is about 65% of the federal savings the deduction generates, squarely inside the range in the table, and the cash went to the production at closing.

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What This Does to Your Budget

Run the formula against a real budget and something useful happens.

Take that $5 million budget. Shoot it in Illinois and the state credit, once monetized, covers something like 30% of qualified spend, call it $1.5 million. That leaves $3.5 million to raise.

Now apply the distinction from the top of the article. Under Section 181, budget and deduction were the same thing: a $5 million production cost meant a $5 million deduction, $1.85 million of savings at 37%, and a fully hedged raise of $925,000 to $1.85 million. A credit plus a 181 investor got you most of the way, but not all of the way, unless the investor took a partial hedge. Under Section 168(k) the deduction is what the finished film is worth. A completed $5 million picture with its cast attached and a distributor circling should appraise in the $10 to $15 million range. Take the low end: at $10 million, the deduction is $10 million, the savings at 37% are $3.7 million, and the entire $3.5 million equity slice can be raised from one or two investors with cash fully hedged by the savings. At $12 million the savings are $4.44 million and the same raise sits comfortably inside the 2x-to-break-even range. The picture is funded, and the only two parties in the waterfall are the investor and you.

Compare that with the traditional stack on the right: third-party equity that recoups with a premium and then takes half the profits, a senior lender against presales, a gap lender behind the senior lender, and the credit. Four parties, four sets of documents, four claims on revenue before the producer sees a dollar, and a set of approval rights that come along with the equity. The economics of why Stack A tends to leave the producer with more of their own film are worth an article of their own, and that article is on our list. The point for today is narrower: the formula above tells you whether Stack A is available to you. For most films under $10 million with a credible release path, it is.

Stack A is not all-or-nothing, either. The same $5 million picture can carry a Section 168(k) investor alongside traditional equity and a presale loan when the project calls for it, because the cast got bigger or a lender wanted in. The tax-advantaged slice simply gets smaller and its hedge gets deeper: at $1.5 million of investor cash against $3.7 million of savings, the investor’s cash is covered about two and a half times over. What you give up is the short waterfall. The lender is repaid first, the equity recoups with its premium, and the profits are split four ways instead of two.

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Why a Real Investor’s Number Is Usually Smaller Than the Ceiling

The figures in this article are statutory ceilings. They are the right numbers for a producer sizing a raise, and they are the wrong numbers for an investor filling out a return. The box below is for the investor’s CPA; a producer can skip it without missing anything. (Producers tend to skip it. CPAs tend to screenshot it. Both are doing their jobs.)

None of this changes what your film can generate. It changes how much of it a particular investor can absorb in a particular year, and that is a question their CPA answers after reading the actual documents. Our job is to build a deduction that is real, defensible, and as large as the film honestly supports. Theirs is to fit it to the investor.

Run Your Own Number

You now have the formula. The deduction (your budget under 181, your appraised value under 168(k)), times the investor’s rate, times one-half to one. That is your fully hedged range; the partially hedged range runs higher.

Run it on the producer who opened this article. A $6 million budget shot in Illinois: call the credit $1.8 million, leaving $4.2 million to raise. A finished film with that cast ought to appraise well above cost; for the example, say $12 million. At 37%, the savings are $4.44 million, and his fully hedged range is $2.2 to $4.44 million. His raise fit inside it. The number he wanted turned out not to be a number. It was this formula, with his film in it.

If you would rather not do it by hand, we built a free tool that does it for you: enter your budget and where you are shooting, and the Film Funding Calculator shows how the state incentive, debt, and crowdfunding shrink the equity check you actually need to raise. Start there. When you want to know what your film would appraise for, and which investors in our network are a match, schedule a call. Bring the budget. We will bring the appraiser’s questions.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute tax, legal, or investment advice. All figures are illustrative federal calculations at statutory ceilings and do not reflect any investor’s actual tax position, state taxes, or the loss-limitation rules described above. The CREATE Act figures describe pending legislation that may not be enacted or may be enacted in a different form. Prospective investors should consult their own tax and legal advisors. Securities are offered only to accredited investors through offering documents that describe the risks in full.