In this issue: Should Filmmakers Be Content to Have Taxing Authorities Judge Their Content? Upcoming 2012 Speaking Engagements; Individual Liability for Company Taxes; Potential Unity and Business Income in California; Managing Withholding for a Mobile Workforce: Special Treatment of Deferred Compensation and Stock Options; and California's Property Tax Exclusion for Solar Energy Power Plants: Waiting to Sell Until New Year's Day Might Produce a Huge Hangover.

The vast majority of states have enacted tax incentive programs for qualifying motion picture and television productions. These tax incentives are available in many forms, including income tax credits (typically transferable), sales tax exemptions, hotel tax exemptions and cash rebates of qualified expenditures. Although the features of each state’s program vary, the common purpose of these programs is to spur local economic growth by incentivizing the motion picture and television industries to locate their productions in the state offering an incentive program.

So what happens when a production company meets all the eligibility requirements for a tax credit, but cannot get past the state’s censors? As we learned recently in New Jersey, the shooting location of the reality television series Jersey Shore, tax credits might be revoked if the state decides that the television program makes the state look bad.