Why So Few Film Production Payroll Accountants

A SCARCITY OF FILM PAYROLL ACCOUNTANTS

When I was on my last television series production in New York (2018/19) there were so few local film payroll accountants that we had to hire someone from out-of-state. Recently my son-in-law, a Film Payroll Accountant based out of Toronto, told me that there aren’t enough film payroll accountants to supply the demand there as well. I knew that this was a need in the newer tax incentive States, but I didn’t think it was so prevalent in other more established film production centers like New York and Toronto.

WHY?

So, it got me to thinking – why are there so few film production payroll accountants?  Is it the demand from the financiers to have more skilled payroll accountants or is it just that we of the old guard are retiring?  Or, maybe it’s just that the productions are leaving Hollywood more and more and need a train more local film payroll people?

HIGH DEMAND

Probably a blend of all the above, with special emphasis on the last point. At any rate it spells opportunity to you guys out there who want to get into the ‘biz but haven’t found a foothold. Just to reinforce my point, I did a little homework. I checked out several pages of Emily’s List (a blog announcing various film accounting jobs available across America and Canada). Out of a sample of 120 listings, 52 were for a Film Payroll Accountant or Assistant Film Payroll Accountant. That’s over 43% of the listings are for local Film Payroll Accountants.

GROSS PAYROLL ONLY

As you can see from my other posts, film payroll accounting is all about knowing how to calculate the “Gross Pay” – that is, understanding the rules regarding Overtime Hours multiplied by the contracted rate, plus any Meal Penalties and Rest Violations. You don’t need to know about government and union withholdings and contributions – all of that nasty stuff is done by the film payroll service companies.

HOW TO CALCULATE GROSS PAYROLL

So, the task becomes knowing how to calculate union and guild payroll, and that’s all we do for 2 full days – right from beginning to end. You will be left with all of the reference material, as well as on-line access to the full courses and materials for future reference.

See my web page for more info at http://hwww.talkfilm.biz/filmworkshops6.htm

 

Cheers,

 

John