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At Wrapbook, we pride ourselves on providing outstanding free resources to producers and their crews, but this post is for informational purposes only as of the date above. The content on our website is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for legal, accounting, or tax advice. You should consult with your own legal, accounting, or tax advisors to determine how this general information may apply to your specific circumstances.
Understanding the SAG-AFTRA Exhibit B form is essential for staying compliant with union rules while supporting the long-term health of the acting profession.
In this post, we’ll let you know exactly why the SAG-AFTRA Exhibit B form is so important and detail how to fill out the form yourself.
To fully understand the SAG-AFTRA Exhibit B form, we’ll have to first dive into some background.
To remain compliant with SAG-AFTRA and continue to be able to hire SAG-AFTRA performers, producers and production companies are required to adhere to certain rules and regulations. The exact nature of those rules varies depending on the type of contract signed with SAG-AFTRA. These rules cover everything from observing union holidays to making residual payments within specific timeframes.
Fun fact: Under most SAG-AFTRA contracts, producers are required to use a pre-approved payroll services company. Wrapbook is one of them!
These rules are designed to protect working class performers, many of whom rely on the union for access to essential benefits or support they wouldn’t have on their own.
And perhaps the most important of those benefits is...
The SAG-AFTRA Health Plan plays the critical role of negotiating and organizing health insurance for actors, many of whom lack the ability to get affordable coverage on their own. Without the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan, performers face a dire choice: Pay high rates for minimal coverage with private insurance companies or forgo health insurance altogether.
To solve this, SAG-AFTRA crafted a more equitable system. Under most contracts, producers are required to contribute a percentage of each performer’s earnings to the Health Plan. SAG-AFTRA’s strategy creates collective bargaining power with insurance companies, granting its members the kind of financial backing usually reserved for full-time employees at major corporations.
It’s important to note that these contributions are in addition to the SAG-AFTRA base rate that producers are already paying performers. Given that the Health Plan remittance is an added cost on top, producers need to budget beyond just base rates.
As you can imagine, keeping track of who’s paying whom, when, how, and why in this situation can get complicated. After all, performers aren’t just paid for days on set. They are also paid for rehearsing days, holding days, rerecording days, promotional appearances, residuals, and possibly more.
To help track all those payments and ensure the right health plan contributions are made, SAG-AFTRA invented the Exhibit B form.
The SAG-AFTRA Exhibit B is a document that logs details about performer payments and health plan contributions, organized in one place on a payment-by-payment basis. It enables SAG-AFTRA to process contributions accurately while ensuring that a production remains compliant with union rules.
The first step in working with the SAG-AFTRA Exhibit B form is to make sure you’re working with the right version.
Exhibit B comes in several variations, each corresponding to a different set of SAG-AFTRA contracts. While they all serve the same general purpose of tracking earnings and contributions, the details can differ slightly depending on the agreement. These separate documents are increasingly referred to by the more generic term “Contribution Forms” to avoid confusion, but the core idea remains the same.
In this guide, we’ll cover the main sections that are common across multiple different Exhibit B forms and call out any substantial contract-specific intricacies. To get the most out of this article, we recommend following along with the SAG-AFTRA Exhibit B form that is appropriate for your production’s contract type. Take a moment to download it from the list below:
Once you have the right form, we can move on to the next step.
At the top of every version of the SAG-AFTRA Exhibit B, you’ll find a section dedicated to basic information about your production. If you’ve never seen Exhibit B before, the sight of all these blank fields may seem overwhelming...
But don’t panic. You’ve got this.
Despite how it looks, this section is relatively straightforward. Think of it as the “demographics” section of the Exhibit B form. You’re simply entering information you likely already have on hand, such as the production title, employer name, contract type, and so on.
Most of what you need can be found directly in your production records and documentation. If you encounter any roadblocks, you can always contact a SAG-AFTRA representative for clarification. That being said, there are a few form-specific subsections worth exploring in more detail.
On both the TV/Theatrical/Net Code/New Media and the Corporate/Educational/Interactive/Radio/Audiobooks versions of the SAG-AFTRA Exhibit B form, you’ll notice a subsection entitled “Select Contract” in the top right corner.
The “Select Contract” subsection is self-explanatory; you simply have to mark the box next to the specific SAG-AFTRA contract type that your production falls under. However, it’s crucial that you enter the correct information here.
Why? Because the contract you select directly determines how much you’ll need to contribute to the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan.
If you pick the wrong box, you could either overpay or raise a red flag with the union.
And let’s be honest, no producer wants either of those headaches.
On the TV/Theatrical/Net Code/New Media version of the SAG-AFTRA Exhibit B form, you’ll notice a rectangle labeled “TV/New Media Only” on the right-hand side. As such, the contents of this rectangle only apply to productions operating under television and new media contracts.
The left side of this rectangle, entitled “Length of picture,” requires a straightforward answer. Just check the box that most accurately describes the runtime of the project.
Meanwhile, the right side of the rectangle refers to something labeled “Side Letter K.”
The term “Side Letter K” refers to a SAG-AFTRA television contract provision that “allows for a reduced contribution rate for pilots, presentations and television productions in the first two seasons of any new one-hour series first exhibited on or after July 1, 2005.”
In other words, if you can check the “Yes” box, your production will qualify for a lower contribution rate to the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan.
Once you’ve filled out all of this basic information, you’re ready to move on to the next section.
If you're working under a commercial contract, you will run into the “Use Type” section of the Exhibit B form.
Similar to the AICP bid form, you may already be familiar with this section if you work in advertising. If not, here's what you need to know.
The “Use Type” section is where you would note all the minutia regarding where, when, how, and how long your commercial will actually air. These details may seem minor, but they have a direct impact on performer compensation. This subsequently affects how much your production owes to the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan.
For example, just like choosing to shoot a commercial in Los Angeles, New York, or Chicago can affect your production costs upfront, deciding where it airs—whether in those cities or elsewhere—can impact costs long after the shoot wraps.
The same goes for whether the commercial is made for cable or the internet, if it airs locally versus internationally, or even if it’s in another language. Each of these details affects performer pay, and by extension, your health plan contributions.
Entering correct information into the “Use Type” section of Exhibit B is critical to remaining SAG-AFTRA compliant. In fact, some of the information you'll enter may be pre-determined by the specific agreement you've negotiated with the union, so be sure to double-check your contract or consult your rep.
Within the “Use Type” section, you’ll find a smaller area labeled “Program,” usually in the upper left corner. This is where you’ll identify the specific SAG-AFTRA agreement under which your commercial falls.
SAG-AFTRA offers multiple commercial agreements, each designed around where and how your spot will air. These agreements come with different pay scales based on volume and geographic reach, essentially offering tiered pricing for broader distribution. This effectively enables producers to enjoy bulk discounts for agreeing to air commercials under certain conditions.
Since your agreement is typically chosen well before cameras roll, this information should be readily available by the time you need to file an Exhibit B.
If you want to read more about the different types of SAG-AFTRA agreements and how they might affect your production, check out our Essential Guide to SAG-AFTRA Rates.
This next section of the SAG-AFTRA Exhibit B form is fairly similar across all variations of the form. Here, you’ll enter the personal information for each SAG-AFTRA member on your production.
The key to this section is ensuring that the information you enter matches the information on the SAG-AFTRA contract and the employee’s own paperwork.
Any discrepancies could raise red flags with SAG-AFTRA, potentially costing your production precious time or financial resources.
Speaking of saving time and money, here’s a quick pro-tip:
You can report multiple employees on a single Exhibit B form. It contains entry fields for multiple employees, saving you from filing separate forms and allowing you to process all related health plan contributions with a single check.
Now, let’s move on to Exhibit B’s penultimate section.
Time to do the math.
If you’ve done your due diligence and filled out the Exhibit B form correctly, this should be the most straightforward section you’ve faced so far. In most cases, all you need to do is multiply the gross compensation paid to your performers in the Exhibit B form by the contribution rate specified in your SAG-AFTRA agreement. The resulting amount is how much you owe the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan.
In some cases, your production may also need to calculate payment based on “Liquidated Damages." Liquidated damages are paid when one party breaches a contract. If this applies to your production, you’ll need to refer directly to the relevant SAG-AFTRA contract to find the correct amount. As far as the Exhibit B form is concerned, the calculation remains the same.
Now, with your payment information locked in, you’re ready for the final step.
That’s right. The final and most important step in completing an Exhibit B is signing the form. Just add an appropriate, legal signature on the document and you’re good to go.
You’ll also need to submit the form along with its corresponding contribution to the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan. Without the payment, Exhibit B is just a very official-looking piece of paper.
Contributions to the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan provide a critical safety net for the performers and artists who power the entertainment industry.
To stay compliant on each project, Wrapbook offers an all-in-one platform to streamline your payroll and reporting. To get a firsthand look at how we can be a force multiplier for your productions, check out our demo.
