Incentives · ON

Ontario
film incentives

OPSTC 21.5% all-spend, with OFTTC and OCASE for domestic and animation

Primary-sourced 2026-07-29 · full statutes, quotes and legislative history in docs/tax/province-on.md · estimates only, never tax advice.

Service production rate
21.5%

before bonuses · the rate a foreign production starts from

How it pays

Refundable tax credit

Fully refundable, claimed on the T2 for the year the expenditures were incurred. CRA pays net of taxes owing. No annual funding envelope — timing follows T2 assessment. Refunds cannot be assigned to a third party, though CRA can redirect the cheque to a lender at the corporation’s address.

Modelled on $12M USD
25.1%

net effective on total budget · ≈C$4.1M stacked with federal

Model your own →

Programmes

Where a province runs more than one, they are usually mutually exclusive — a production claims one, not both. Getting this fork wrong is the most expensive mistake available at this stage.

OPSTC

Ontario Production Services Tax Credit

Foreign / service production All-spend

For service and foreign productions, and domestic productions not claiming OFTTC. All-spend: labour, eligible service contracts and tangible property.

ComponentRateBase
Basic 21.5% Qualifying Ontario production expenditures (QPE)
OFTTC

Ontario Film & Television Tax Credit

Domestic Canadian content Labour-based

For Canadian-controlled productions meeting content points and a 75% Ontario cost test. Cannot be combined with OPSTC on the same production.

ComponentRateBase
Basic 35% Eligible Ontario labour
First-time producer 40% Eligible Ontario labour
OCASE

Ontario Computer Animation & Special Effects

Either Labour-based

Stacks on top of either OFTTC or OPSTC for eligible animation and VFX labour.

ComponentRateBase
Basic 18% Ontario labour attributable to eligible digital animation and VFX
Stacking with Ottawa

Federal Production Services Tax Credit (PSTC) — 16%

Provincial production-services credits can be stacked with the federal PSTC — but under ITA s. 125.5(1) they count as "assistance" and reduce the federal qualified-labour base dollar for dollar. So the provincial credit is computed first, and the federal applies to what is left. This is the interaction that breaks spreadsheets.

ITA s. 125.5 · Income Tax Regulations s. 9300 · Cannot be combined with the federal CPTC on the same production (ITA s. 125.5(4)).

Caps, floors and thresholds
  • QPE is capped at four times Ontario labour — effectively a 25% labour floor. A production with thin Ontario labour cannot claim the full all-spend base.
  • Eligible on-location real-property lease costs are capped at 5% of QPE net of those fees.
  • OPSTC requires production costs over $1M, or per-episode costs over $100k (under 30 min) / $200k (30 min and over).
Corrections

Things secondary summaries routinely get wrong.

  • The QPE four-times-labour cap is routinely omitted from secondary summaries. On an all-spend programme it is the constraint most likely to reduce a real claim.
  • OFTTC and OPSTC are mutually exclusive on the same production. OCASE stacks on either.
Sources

Primary only. Secondary aggregators are used as cross-checks, never as a source of record.

Ontario Production Services Tax Credit Ontario Creates
Film in Ontario Ontario Creates
The handoff

Rates are the easy part.

Whether your production actually qualifies — and which stream to elect — depends on ownership, content points, labour share and where you shoot. That is the conversation worth having before you lock a budget.

Model your budget → Production fit check
Head to head

Ontario against the markets it usually competes with.

ON vs BCON vs QCON vs ABON vs MB
Permits & red tape

What it actually takes to shoot on the street here.

Toronto · friction 3/5
Recent changes

No recorded changes for Ontario. The full changelog covers every jurisdiction.

Other provinces
British ColumbiaQuebecAlbertaManitobaNova ScotiaSaskatchewan Compare →

The federal grind, worked through

Under ITA s. 125.5(1), "assistance" reduces the federal qualified Canadian labour expenditure dollar for dollar. The definition is broad: grants, subsidies, forgivable loans, and provincial and territorial film tax credits, from Canadian or foreign sources, received or reasonably expected to be received.

provincial credit = provincial rate × provincial base

federal base    = qualified Canadian labour − provincial credit
federal PSTC    = 16% × federal base

total = provincial credit + federal PSTC

There is one carve-out: the PSTC is not assistance to itself (CRA RC4385). But under s. 125.5(5) it is government assistance for all other purposes of the Act — it goes into income, or reduces the capital cost of the production for CCA.

Why this matters more than the headline rate

A province advertising a high labour-based rate takes a bigger bite out of the federal base than a province with a lower all-spend rate. Comparing provincial headline rates without applying the grind systematically overstates the high-rate provinces.

Estimates only — not tax advice. Confirm with a Canadian production accountant.

Modelling this province for a real show?

Rates are the easy part. Whether the crew and stage space exist in your window is the part that decides it.

One email, a real reply, no list. Want to say more? Use the full form.