October 28, 2026
Re: H.R.10582 / S.5552, the Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act
Dear U.S. Senators and Representatives:
On behalf of the Arts, Entertainment, and Media Industries (AEMI) coalition within the Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO (DPE), I urge you to cosponsor H.R.10582 / S.5552, the Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act (MPTERA), and to help secure its passage before the end of the 119th Congress. This bipartisan, bicameral legislation would create a federal tax incentive to bring over 100,000 family-supporting, middle-class film and television production jobs back to the United States.
By way of introduction, the AEMI coalition consists of 12 national unions that represent professionals in the arts, entertainment, and media industries. AEMI union members include the workers who make American film and television: the actors on screen, the directorial teams and writers who shape every story, the musicians who score it, and the camera operators, editors, artists, and other technicians behind the scenes. In recent years, these workers have watched production and post-production move overseas to countries that offer federal incentives the United States does not. According to production tracker ProdPro, the United States’ share of global film and television production spending fell from 52 percent in 2022 to 38 percent in early 2026. The cost has been over 100,000 lost American jobs. AEMI union members have gone months between jobs, drained their savings, and struggled to keep the health coverage they earn on set. Stories written for American audiences are being filmed abroad because other countries pay productions to go there.
MPTERA gives AEMI union members and other American workers a fair chance to compete. The bill includes 20 percent base tax credits on qualified compensation for both production and traditional post-production work performed in the United States. Productions can also earn five percent bonus credits, up to a total credit of 30 percent, by filming in a rural opportunity zone or federally declared disaster area, qualifying as an independent production, spreading production across ten or more states, or increasing the number of productions they make in the United States rather than abroad. Those incentives will bring jobs to communities far from Los Angeles and New York.
The benefits will also reach well past the set. Film, television, and the performing arts share one workforce. An actor who spends the summer on a regional stage spends the fall on a television set. A lighting technician who illuminates a touring show one week works on a feature film set the next. Screen work is often what makes a career in theater, music, or another discipline financially possible. When production returns to a community, so do the artists and technicians who sustain its theaters, orchestras, and performing arts institutions. Bringing film and television jobs home strengthens America’s entire creative economy.
On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of union members who create the films and television programs that carry American stories to audiences around the world, I ask that you join your colleagues in both parties as a cosponsor of MPTERA and help pass this critical legislation in the 119th Congress. If you have any questions, please contact me or DPE Legislative Representative, Andy Dickson, at adickson@dpeaflcio.org.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Dorning, President
Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO