Los Angeles County is where the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plans population actually lives and works: the studio lots, the North Hollywood post and rental-house corridor, the Santa Clarita stages, and the Valley neighbourhoods that exist because of a six a.m. call. This page is about the hours calendar, the city's own tax rules for creative workers, and what to do in a period when the phone stops.
Where entertainment industry crew are in Los Angeles County
The production geography is a ring around the eastern San Fernando Valley. Burbank holds the largest concentration of studio lots and post facilities anywhere; Hollywood carries the historic lots along Melrose, Sunset and Gower; Studio City has Radford; and the Santa Clarita Valley has become the county's growth stage market, with soundstages around Valencia and a ranch-and-location economy spread around them. Culver City and Playa Vista carry the streaming and production-services side to the west.
The support economy sits somewhere else again, and if that is your industry the lot is not your address. Grip, lighting, camera and picture-vehicle rental houses cluster along the Lankershim and Cahuenga corridors in North Hollywood and out through Sun Valley, Sylmar and Pacoima where the yards and warehouses are. Post-production, colour, sound and visual effects concentrate in North Hollywood, Burbank and Hollywood. A day that starts at a rental house at five in the morning is a different working life from one that starts at a gate, and it produces a different hours pattern across a year.
The residential map simply follows the call sheet. Studio City, Valley Village, North Hollywood, Toluca Lake, Sherman Oaks, Encino, Tarzana, Los Feliz and Silver Lake are crew neighbourhoods because a six a.m. call from the Westside is a materially worse life, and Santa Clarita has become the same thing for the Valencia stages. Each of those has its own page and they carry the local detail rather than repeating it here: Studio City, North Hollywood, Hollywood and Encino.
What changes locally
The City of Los Angeles has a rule for this audience that exists nowhere else, and a great many people working inside city limits have never heard of it. Someone doing business in the city generally needs a Business Tax Registration Certificate. The city then provides a Creative Artist Exemption, which exempts gross receipts from creative activity performed for entertainment or aesthetic purposes up to $300,000 a year, and separately a Small Business Exemption at $100,000 or less of total gross receipts. Both require a timely renewal — miss the filing date and the exemption is forfeited for that year, and tax becomes payable on receipts that would otherwise have been exempt. Which roles the creative-artist definition actually reaches is a question for the Office of Finance rather than for us, and it is worth asking rather than assuming in either direction. Put the renewal date in the calendar next to the estimated tax dates, because the two get missed together.
The second local fact is that how much work exists in this county is partly a policy variable. California runs a film and television tax credit programme through the California Film Commission, currently in its 4.0 form, and where a production shoots is influenced by it and by what other states and countries put on the table. You cannot plan around a legislature. You can plan for the fact that the volume of work in your own county moves with one: in an industry where the local supply of hours is a political output as well as an economic one, the argument for a reserve sized to a genuinely long gap is far stronger than the generic three-month rule ever makes it sound.
What we do about it
We plan from the qualifying period rather than from the tax year. That means your period dates and your current hours position are on the table at the first meeting, and the cash reserve is built to carry a thin period plus the household's insurance costs, held somewhere it can be reached without selling anything. Keeping that money separate from invested money is what stops a slow spring from forcing a sale at the worst possible time. Why the order of bad years matters more than the average.
This county is where the loan-out population actually is, and where the infrastructure around it already exists — the payroll services, the business managers, the accountants who file a corporate return for a single-member entity every spring without anyone thinking it unusual. If yours is one of them, almost everything a retirement plan inside that corporation requires is already running and simply unused: the payroll that pays you is the payroll a deferral would come out of. The main guide sets out what the corporation can sponsor and up to what ceiling. Two things are particular to being here rather than anywhere else. The city business tax described above reaches the entity as well as the individual, so the plan decision and the renewal date belong in one conversation. And because every professional involved is local and often shares clients, it is worth settling out loud who does what — who keeps the books, who files, and who is acting as a fiduciary on the investments. Formation and salary remain your CPA's and an entertainment attorney's work; we take the structure as we find it.
Norwalk to the eastern Valley is a genuine drive and we are not going to pretend otherwise, so most of this happens by video and in the evening, around a schedule where wrap time is not yours to choose. Accounts open at $0, our fees are published, and we work in English and Spanish.
The structures that apply: Motion Picture Industry Pension & Health Plans, loan-out corporation plans, Solo 401(k), SAG-AFTRA / IATSE plans. The full guide for entertainment industry crew goes through each one, and here is the same audience in Orange County.
Fifteen minutes, no charge
We are in Norwalk, which is inside Los Angeles County and minutes from the Orange County line. Come to us, we come to you, or we do it by video — evenings by video.
Your city
Los Angeles County has 88 incorporated cities and about 9.7 million residents. These are the ones where entertainment industry crew concentrate, each with its own page:
- Financial advisor in Studio City
- Financial advisor in North Hollywood
- Financial advisor in Hollywood
- Financial advisor in Encino
- Financial advisor in Tarzana
- Financial advisor in Santa Clarita
- Financial advisor in Los Feliz
- Financial advisor in Silver Lake
All 89 cities we publish a page for →
Our fees, published
No competing advisor page in this area publishes its fees. Here are ours.
| What | Fee |
|---|---|
| Investment management | 1.5% to 2.0% of assets per year; Advisers may set a rate below the standard schedule, as low as 0%, at their discretion — and whatever rate applies to you is disclosed in writing before you engage. Our Form ADV Part 2A, Item 5, states the fee as up to 2.00% of assets per year, subject to negotiation; the firm may waive all or part of it. Generally billed quarterly in arrears |
| Account minimum | No minimum account balance |
| Commissions and product fees | None — we are fee-only |
| Solicitor compensation | May be received or paid under disclosed arrangements |
| Initial conversation | Free, 15 minutes, no obligation |
Complete fee details in our Form ADV Part 2A, Item 5.
Questions
How do I know where I stand on hours before it is too late to do anything?
Ask the plan office, in month three rather than month six. Your record is held by the Plans, not by the production that hired you, and it is readable at any point in a qualifying period — including what sits in your Bank of Hours, which is the part most people forget they have. Knowing the number early is what turns it into a decision: it is the difference between choosing a job for its hours and discovering afterwards that you needed them. We are not the source for your hours and we will never quote them at you. We build the cash side around whatever the Plans tell you.
Everything I have goes into the mortgage and the household. Should I still contribute?
Something, consistently, even if the amount looks trivial next to a Valley mortgage. The value of an invested dollar comes mostly from how long it stays invested, which means a small amount started this year is a different thing from a large amount started in five, not a worse version of it. In this industry there is a second argument: the habit is what survives a slow period. An account you have contributed to every month for three years does not get abandoned when work thins, whereas an intention does. We open accounts at $0 and ask for $50 a month afterwards. Why the minimum is zero.
I have money in an old plan from a job outside the industry. What do I do with it?
Look at it before moving it, because the default advice is not always right. The questions are what it costs where it sits, what it would cost where it is going, whether anything in it cannot be replicated elsewhere, and whether a rollover would create a tax event or interfere with a future Roth strategy. Sometimes the honest answer is to leave it alone, which is advice nobody paid by transaction has an incentive to give. The mistakes that cost the most.
Nobody in this business seems to understand how I get paid. Is that going to be a problem here?
It should not be, because the structure is the first thing we ask about rather than an inconvenience we work around. What matters is that hours drive your benefits, that residuals arrive detached from the work that produced them, and that a strong year and a slow year are not the same planning problem. A plan that assumes a monthly salary will fail in your third slow month regardless of how good the investments are. If we are not the right firm for you we will say so on the first call rather than after.
Do I need a City of Los Angeles business tax certificate if I am crew?
If you are doing business in the city as an independent worker or through your own corporation, generally yes, and the exemptions are what make it painless rather than expensive. The Creative Artist Exemption covers creative-activity receipts up to $300,000, and the Small Business Exemption covers total gross receipts of $100,000 or less. Both are forfeited if the renewal is late. Whether your particular role and income fall inside the creative-artist definition is a determination for the Office of Finance, and W-2 employment through a payroll company is a different situation again. Ask them or your CPA; do not assume either way, because the cost of assuming wrong is a year of tax on exempt receipts.
Production is slow across the board. Does living in this county help at all?
It is the only real advantage available, and it is worth using deliberately. Los Angeles County contains more covered work than everywhere else combined, which means day-playing across several lots, rental houses and post facilities is a realistic way to close a gap here in a way it simply is not for someone based anywhere else. That only works if you know where you stand early enough to go looking, which is an argument for reading your record in the first half of a period rather than the second. Where the county advantage disappears is in a general slowdown, when everybody within driving distance is chasing the same days — and that is precisely the scenario the cash reserve exists for. Its whole job is to make sure the answer in a thin month is never to sell an investment.
I live in Santa Clarita and work the Valencia stages. Does anything change?
Not the benefit mechanics — the hours rules follow the collective agreement and the Plans, not the address. What changes is everything around them. Housing costs less than in the Valley proper, which frees cash flow that most people quietly absorb rather than invest, and that is the specific opportunity worth naming. Work in that part of the county is also more concentrated in fewer facilities, so a slowdown at one of them affects a Santa Clarita-based crew member more sharply than someone who can take work at any of the Burbank lots. Bigger reserve, and use the housing-cost difference deliberately rather than by accident.
What does this cost, and is there a minimum?
There is no minimum to open an account. We ask for $50 a month of continuing deposits, because a plan you do not fund is not a plan. Investment management is 1.5% to 2.0% of assets per year, billed quarterly, and it is published on the site — which is more than most firms in this market will tell you before a meeting.
Do I have to have a lot saved already?
No, and that is deliberate. Most firms set a minimum precisely to avoid people at the start of this. We built the opposite: $0 to open, and the same fiduciary standard whether the account is four figures or seven.
¿Atienden en español?
Sí. Atendemos en español, y buena parte de nuestro material existe en español, escrito originalmente, no traducido por máquina.