New Hampshire Film Tax Credit

New Hampshire Film Tax Credit: Current Status (2026)

New Hampshire does not have an active statewide film tax credit or production rebate program as of 2026. The state has no dedicated film office offering financial incentives to attract outside productions, placing it among a small group of states that have not enacted formal film incentive legislation.

For producers evaluating location options in New England, this is the most important thing to understand upfront: New Hampshire will not reduce your tax burden through a production incentive. Every dollar spent in the state is a dollar spent without an offset from a credit or rebate mechanism.

What New Hampshire Does Offer

The absence of a tax credit does not mean New Hampshire is without appeal for certain productions. The state offers practical advantages that attract smaller projects and commercial shoots:

• No sales tax. New Hampshire has no state sales tax. Productions purchasing equipment, props, or materials in-state avoid the 6% to 9% sales tax burden common in neighboring states.

• No income tax on wages. New Hampshire does not levy a broad-based personal income tax on earned wages, which simplifies payroll withholding for productions.

• Varied locations. The White Mountains, Lake Winnipesaukee, Portsmouth's historic waterfront, and rural small towns give production designers access to diverse visual environments within a compact geography.

• Proximity to Boston talent base. The state sits within 60 miles of Boston, giving productions access to a deep pool of crew, extras, and support vendors without the cost structure of filming in Massachusetts itself.

Proposed Legislation: New Hampshire SB 286

In 2025, New Hampshire legislators introduced Senate Bill 286, which would create two Business Enterprise Tax (BET) credits for film and motion picture production companies. The proposed structure includes:

• A 25% BET credit on qualifying employee wages paid to workers subject to New Hampshire tax

• A 25% BET credit on production-related expenses incurred in-state

• A requirement that at least 50% of filming time occur in New Hampshire

• A requirement that in-state production expenses exceed 50% of total production-related expenses

• $500,000 appropriated for a new New Hampshire Office of Film and Creative Media for fiscal years 2026 and 2027

As of early 2026, SB 286 had not been enacted into law. Productions planning shoots in New Hampshire should confirm current legislative status directly with the state before budgeting based on this proposed structure. The bill represents the clearest signal yet that New Hampshire is actively considering entering the film incentive market, but no program is operational today.

How New Hampshire Compares to New England Neighbors

New Hampshire sits in a region where competing states have built robust incentive programs. Understanding the contrast helps producers decide when, if ever, New Hampshire makes sense as a primary filming location versus a secondary unit or supplemental location.

Massachusetts

Massachusetts offers a 25% transferable tax credit on all Massachusetts-based production spending, with no minimum spend requirement for the payroll credit component and a $50,000 minimum for the production credit. The program has no annual cap and has been one of the most consistently used incentive programs in the Northeast for two decades. Productions that need Boston city locations, Cape Cod coastline, or suburban New England streets almost always file Massachusetts incentives.

Maine

Maine operates a wage rebate program that returns a percentage of wages paid to Maine residents working on qualifying productions. While smaller in total value than Massachusetts, it applies to productions spending as little as $75,000 in-state, making it accessible to independent and documentary projects.

Connecticut

Connecticut provides a 10% to 30% tax credit depending on in-state spending thresholds, with the 30% rate applying to productions spending $1 million or more. The state has attracted numerous feature films and episodic productions using this tiered structure.

New Hampshire does not compete with any of these programs because it has no program to offer. Producers shooting stories set in New Hampshire frequently choose to film in Massachusetts or Vermont and use New Hampshire only for specific location elements that cannot be replicated elsewhere.

What Productions Currently Shoot in New Hampshire

Without financial incentives, New Hampshire primarily attracts three types of production activity:

• Commercial and advertising shoots. The absence of sales tax and access to scenic landscapes makes New Hampshire a cost-effective option for commercial photographers and advertising production companies that do not rely on film tax credits to make their budgets work.

• Independent documentaries and shorts. Filmmakers with connections to the state, or projects about New Hampshire-specific subjects, shoot here out of necessity rather than financial incentive. The budget scale of these projects means the absence of a credit matters less than it would for a feature film.

• Travel and tourism content. Tourism boards in the White Mountains region and around the Lakes Region commission video content regularly, funding it through their own budgets rather than relying on a state incentive program.

Planning a Budget for New Hampshire Production

If your project requires New Hampshire locations, here is how to approach the budget:

Do not model a tax credit offset. There is no program to claim against. Any financial model that assumes a New Hampshire incentive rebate is based on proposed legislation that has not passed, not on current law.

Factor in the no-sales-tax benefit. New Hampshire's 0% state sales tax does reduce costs on purchases made in-state. For productions buying significant quantities of expendables, props, or materials, this is a real and quantifiable saving.

Consider a split-shoot structure. Productions that need New Hampshire's specific visual character can structure their shoot to spend the majority of their budget in a neighboring incentive state, then send a smaller second unit to New Hampshire for location elements. The primary production gathers the incentive in Massachusetts or Maine, while the specific shots that require New Hampshire geography get captured on a lean unit budget.

Track all in-state expenditures. If SB 286 or similar legislation passes in a future session, productions that have already filmed in New Hampshire will not retroactively qualify for any future program. There is no grandfathering mechanism in the proposed bill. However, maintaining detailed records of New Hampshire spending keeps your options open for any future application requirements.

Resources for New Hampshire Filming

The New Hampshire Film and Television Bureau, operated under the Division of Travel and Tourism Development, provides location assistance, permit guidance, and production liaison services. While the bureau does not administer a tax credit program, it actively supports productions that choose to film in the state.

Contact: New Hampshire Film and Television Bureau, 172 Pembroke Road, Concord, NH 03301. Phone: 603-271-2598. Website: filmnh.org.

The bureau can assist with location scouting in state and private lands, municipal coordination, and connecting productions to local crew and vendors. For productions weighing New Hampshire against incentive states, the bureau staff can also provide honest assessments of what the state can and cannot offer financially.

Managing Your Production Budget Across Multiple States

When your production spans multiple states, tracking where each dollar is spent, which expenditures qualify for which state's incentive program, and how to allocate above-the-line costs becomes a significant accounting challenge. Saturation helps production teams manage multi-state budgets in real time, categorize expenditures by location, and generate the reports needed for incentive applications in states where programs are active.

For productions splitting work between New Hampshire and an incentive state like Massachusetts, Saturation's collaborative budgeting tools keep both the in-state and out-of-state spend visible in a single budget, so your line producer and production accountant are always working from the same numbers.