Cinema, distribution tax credit blocked
The Ministry's GGCA suspends the effectiveness of the measure as a precautionary measure. 35 million frozen after the Regional Administrative Court rulings in favour of the appeals by Medusa, Vision Distribution and Nexo
The film distribution tax credit ends up in the fridge. With the director's decree of 12 May 2026, the Ministry of Culture's DG Cinema suspended as a precautionary measure the effectiveness of the 27 February decree that granted the 2024 final tax credit to national and international distribution companies. The move carries out three orders of the Lazio Regional Administrative Court of 10 April and blocks allocation, compensation and assignment for all beneficiaries.
It is a technical act, but with concrete consequences. On the table are 35 million: the ceiling of the measure. A part had arrived at the decree between February and March. The rest was to follow between April and May. Now everything remains suspended until the judgments on the merits. Those who were waiting for the credit cannot use it, and those who had thought of that strand for their accounts must reopen the file.
The spark was the substantial 'click day' concerning the distribution tax credit. The window opened at the beginning of the year closed within a few hours because the applications reached the ceiling. A peculiarity of the annuality contributed to make the race more crowded: 45 days of 2023, which had remained outside the previous windows, also entered into 2024. The result was the exhaustion of the dowry and the exclusion of some companies. Three of these filed the appeals from which the blockade was then generated. Not just any three companies, it must be said, but three distribution bigwigs: Medusa, Vision Distribution and Nexo. The TAR basically considered it necessary to verify the hypothesis of platform malfunctioning.
The paradox at this point becomes even more obvious. A tool designed to accompany the theatrical release of films becomes uncertainty at the most delicate point in the chain. And if the benefit does not arrive, the problem can rebound on producers, already squeezed between rising costs and fragile theatres.
The blockade comes to throw more petrol on the fire of a sector that has been going through a season of upheaval on tax credit for some time: reform, corrective measures, thresholds, postponements, protests and even judicial scandals (Kaufmann case). The tax credit, born as industrial fuel, has become the place where two difficult requirements are measured: to avoid abuse, but not to turn off the engine of production and circulation.
