How to Fill Out Georgia Form G2-FL: Film Loan-Out Company Withholding

Georgia Form G2-FL is how a film loan-out company tells the Department of Revenue which of its employees should receive credit for the Georgia income tax a production company already withheld on the loan-out’s payments. You file it electronically through the Georgia Tax Center, together with Form G-1003, by February 28 of the year after the withholding occurred. The form takes the lump-sum withholding reported to you on Form G2-FP and splits it among the individual employees who performed the Georgia work, so each person can claim their share on their own Georgia return.¹

What You Need Before You Start

Three things have to be in place before the form can be completed.

First, a Form G2-FP from each production company that paid your loan-out company for Georgia services during the year. The production company is required to issue the G2-FP to you by January 31, showing the total Georgia film withholding tied to its payments. That total is the pool you will allocate. The G2-FP itself is not filed with the Department of Revenue; it is a source document for you.¹

Second, an active payroll withholding account for the loan-out company on the Georgia Tax Center at gtc.dor.ga.gov. If the loan-out does not already have one, register for it before the filing window. You will also need to have provided your federal EIN and Georgia withholding ID to each production company so their withholding payments are tied to the correct entity in the state’s system.²

Third, your payroll records for the year, broken out by employee and by the Georgia-sourced portion of what each employee was paid. The allocation on the G2-FL has to reflect what each employee actually earned for services performed in Georgia, so if someone worked partly in another state, you need to isolate the Georgia share.

Information the Form Requires

For the loan-out company itself, the form asks for the Georgia withholding ID, the federal EIN, and the full legal name and address.

For each employee receiving an allocation, you report:

The calendar year of the withholding.
The employee’s identifying number, typically a Social Security number.
The employee’s name and address.
The Georgia allocated amount withheld on that employee’s behalf.

For each production company whose withholding you are allocating, you report the production company’s name, its film withholding ID, and its federal EIN.³

If your loan-out company received G2-FP forms from more than one production company, treat each production company’s withholding as its own pool and allocate it separately. An employee who worked on two productions appears with two allocations tied to the two different production company identifiers.

How to Allocate the Withholding

The arithmetic is simple when you have the payroll data. The total withholding reported on a G2-FP corresponds to the production company’s payments to your loan-out for Georgia services. You divide that total among the employees in proportion to what each one was paid for the Georgia work covered by those payments.

A straightforward example: a G2-FP reports $50,000 in Georgia film withholding, and two employees each performed half of the Georgia services your loan-out billed to that production company. Each employee’s G2-FL allocation is $25,000.³

The sum of the per-employee allocations tied to a given production company has to match the total on that company’s G2-FP. If they don’t match, go back to the payroll records before filing. The allocation is the whole point of the form, and a reconciliation error is what will show up later when an employee tries to claim a credit the state has no record of.

Filing Through the Georgia Tax Center

Filing is done electronically. Log in to the loan-out company’s Georgia Tax Center account, go to the withholding account, and select the option to file Form G2-FL. The portal walks you through entering the allocations.

You also have to file Form G-1003, the annual withholding reconciliation, at the same time. The GTC handles both in the same workflow.¹

No payment goes with the G2-FL. The production company already remitted the actual tax to the Department of Revenue through its quarterly G-7 Film filings. Your form is purely an allocation document; it moves no money.²

The February 28 Deadline

Form G2-FL is due by February 28 of the year after the withholding was paid. That gives you roughly four weeks after the January 31 deadline by which production companies must send you their G2-FPs. If your loan-out worked with several productions, start collecting G2-FPs in early January so you have time to reconcile before the deadline.¹

Late filing of a withholding return in Georgia carries a penalty of 5 percent of the unpaid tax for each month or partial month the return is overdue, following the general employer withholding penalty structure under O.C.G.A. § 48-7-103.⁴ Beyond the penalty, the practical consequence of not filing is that your employees cannot claim the Georgia withholding credit on their individual returns, because they have no G2-FL to document the allocation.

Give a Copy to Each Employee

Once the form is accepted through the GTC, provide a copy to every employee listed on it. The employee attaches the G2-FL to their Georgia individual income tax return and uses the allocated amount as a withholding credit against their Georgia tax liability, in the same way wage withholding appears on a W-2.¹ Nonresident employees who performed services in Georgia file a Georgia nonresident return to claim their share.

Keep your own copy with the loan-out’s year-end records along with the underlying G2-FP forms and the payroll data behind the allocation. If the Department of Revenue later questions a credit an employee claimed, those documents are what you will be asked to produce.

1
Georgia Department of Revenue. How to Claim Withholding Reported on the G2-FP and the G2-FL
2
Georgia Department of Revenue. Instructions for Production Companies
3
Georgia Department of Revenue. Form G2-FL – Allocated Withholding on Employees of Loan-Out Company
4
Georgia Department of Revenue. Penalty and Interest Rates