Your Texas residency requirement depends on when you shoot.
Updated: 1 day ago
Every guide to the Texas incentive says the same thing: 35% of your crew and cast have to be Texas residents. That sentence is wrong twice, and both errors cost money. It isn't one test, it's two. And it isn't 35%. It's 35% for now, and the number that applies to your show depends on the day you start shooting.
This post explains all of it from the beginning, as if you've never read the program, because I had to learn it that way myself, and most of the summaries out there were written by someone selling something. Where a fact comes from the Texas Film Commission's TMIIIP page, its FAQ or the statute, I say so. Where it's a question the Commission has to answer, I say that too, and I don't answer it.
Two tests, not one.
The Commission's page for projects starting after September 1, 2025 puts it this way, as of September 4, 2026: "35% of paid crew and 35% of paid cast members, including extras, must be Texas Residents." That's two separate percentages. A show that hires a Texas crew and flies in its whole cast can pass the first and fail the second. A show that casts locally and imports its department heads can do the opposite. Blending the two into one pool, which is how most people say it out loud, is how a production ends up at 41% overall and ineligible.
Extras count. On the cast side, they count a lot: a show with eight speaking roles from Los Angeles and two hundred Texas extras is going to pass the cast test on the extras. A show with eight speaking roles from Los Angeles and no extras is not.
How the Commission counts.
The Commission's FAQ says the residency requirements are based on a head count of Texans hired to work in Texas, and that only employees who provide a valid Declaration of Texas Residency are counted in the actual percentage. Residency is proved with a valid Texas driver's license or ID card, a current Texas voter registration, or an ID from a Texas college or university. Head count, not dollars: a Texas PA and an out-of-state cinematographer each count as one. And no declaration means no count, whatever the person's address actually is.
That last part is the operational trap. A Texas resident you didn't collect a declaration from on day one is, for the Commission's math, not a Texas resident. The verification post is about the file; this is the number the file has to prove.
The staircase.
Senate Bill 22 rewrote the residency requirement into a schedule. The statute, Texas Government Code §485.023, says the percentage of the production crew, actors and extras who are Texas residents must be at least:
35% for a project that begins principal photography on or after September 1, 2025, and before September 1, 2027.
40% for a project that begins principal photography on or after September 1, 2027, and before September 1, 2029.
45% for a project that begins principal photography on or after September 1, 2029, and before September 1, 2031.
50% for a project that begins principal photography on or after September 1, 2031.
One wording note: the statute states the percentage in a single sentence, of "production crew, actors, and extras" together, and the Commission's page administers it as two tests, crew and cast. The Commission runs the program, so plan to the page. Then the schedule ends. The statutory text that takes effect September 1, 2035 goes back to 55%, which is where the program was before SB 22. So the residency rule is a nine-year staircase up to 50%, and then, in the statute's own text, a step back to 55%. The SB 22 post covers the rest of what the bill did.
What sets your step.
The statute keys each step to the date a project "begins principal photography." Not the application date, not the date the Commission approves you, not wrap. Principal photography. A show that applies in June 2027 and starts shooting August 20, 2027 is a 35% show. A show that applies the same day and starts September 3, 2027 is a 40% show. Two weeks of schedule is five points of residency on both tests.
That's the statute's text, and the Commission administers the statute. What I can't tell you, and won't, is how the Commission applies it at the edges: what "begins principal photography" means for a show with a splinter unit in August and a main unit in September, or how a show that starts before a step date and shoots past it is treated, or how a schedule slip after application is handled. Those are the Commission's calls. The number is 512-463-9200, and that question belongs on your first call, with your dates in hand.
The waiver nobody mentions.
The statute opens the residency requirement with an exception: the percentages apply "unless the office determines and certifies in writing that a sufficient number of qualified crew, actors, and extras are not available to the company at the time principal photography begins." That's a written certification from the Commission, at its discretion, at the start of photography. I've never seen the Commission's criteria for it published, and I wouldn't build a hiring plan on it. But it exists, and a show with a genuinely unusual department should know to ask.
What it does to a hiring plan.
If you're prepping for a start anywhere near September 1, 2027, plan to 40%, not 35%. It feels reasonable, and the state's production base is growing into it; the momentum of filming here is building, which is the whole reason the staircase exists. A schedule slips. A start date moves from late August to mid-September for a hundred ordinary reasons, and every one of them moves your residency target by five points on two tests. The show that planned to 40% loses nothing if it starts in August. The show that planned to 35% and starts in September has a problem it can't hire its way out of in prep.
Beyond the target: collect the declaration at hire, run both percentages weekly, and hire the departments that are deep in Texas locally on purpose, because they carry the crew number for the departments you have to import. Which departments those are is its own post, coming soon.
The honest note.
None of this is program advice; it's the statute and the Commission's page, quoted, with dates. The Commission has said it is the only source to trust on its program, and on the questions above about how the steps apply to a real schedule, that's exactly right. What a producer of record does with this is operational: collect the paperwork, count the heads, and tell you on a Friday in prep what the number is, so that the Commission's review at the end finds what you expected it to find. That's on the producers page, and the plain-English explainer has the rest of the program.
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