Posted on 10/12/2008 2:39:06 AM PDT by WorkinMan
LOS ANGELES — Already on the hook for billions to bail out Wall Street, taxpayers are also finding themselves stuck with a growing tab for state programs intended to increase local film production...
...Michigan, its own budget sagging, is in the middle of a hot political fight over a generous 40 percent rebate on expenditures to filmmakers that was carried out, with little opposition, only last April. Producers of films for studios like Warner Brothers and the Weinstein Company rushed to cash in ... Rebellious legislators from both parties are now looking to put a cap on the state’s annual film spending, which some have estimated could quickly hit $200 million a year...
...[Michigan] simply refund[s] a percentage of expenditures to the producer ... the state gives up revenue that otherwise would be collected to put money in the producer’s pockets. Advocates, of course, argue that these programs create jobs...
...in Michigan ... a State Senate committee recently moved to cap the state’s film rebates at an aggregate of $50 million a year. “It’s just horrible right now,” Mike Bishop, a Republican state senator, said of Michigan’s financial condition. Mr. Bishop initially backed the film incentive. But he grew alarmed at outlays that he estimated could quickly exceed $110 million a year to subsidize movies ... In any case, Nancy Cassis, another Republican who was the only Michigan senator to oppose the incentives when they began last spring, said she expected to see them capped with bipartisan backing later this year. And she does not look for Hollywood to hang around when the money dries up. “These are not long-term jobs,”...
...Ms. Cassis said. “If just one state offers more, they’ll be out of here before you can say ‘lickety-split.’ ”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I moved to this state 14 years ago after seeing there was no way I could afford to own a home in the way overpriced Washington D.C. area (much less anywhere along "the corridor" to New York) and am finally "living the American Dream" and am making my mortgage payments on a fixed rate loan. (My wife and I were not wooed by a sub-prime mortgage. We were taught by our parents, just as everyone should be taught by their parents, "If something sounds too good to be true..." Though those lower mortgage payments sounded really tempting, we knew we needed to stay within a budget in order to own our home.)
But I digress, I'm not too sure how much longer we can afford to live here though with this our Governess "Jenny G" <said with a squeaky female cheerleading voice and "aheeheehee" added at the end> killing us with spending, more spending, and topped off with a little more spending of our hard earned wages! It's like she's been given daddy's credit card and gone on a spending spree for the last six years! Her failed policies have run this state into the ground and at every turn, she digs deeper and deeper to the core of the earth!
Michigan is a perfect model of what Barack Hussein Obama plans to do with the rest of the country (only worse... although I'm not sure how much worse he can make it than Jenny G has made it in Michigan). Thank the Good Lord that she can't run for president as she had the good sense to declare that she was born in Canada, as opposed to Hussein who can't seem to produce his birth certificate showing him being born in this county. Mark my words people, this man is out to screw our country over.
Though McCain isn't too far right of Hussein, we must vote him into office!
It's obvious that too much time spent dealing with multi-billion dollar budgets has removed the ruling class's ability to deal with real numbers.
This is another great argument for term limits, so that people involved in government have to live in the real world for a while, every now and then.
The phrase 'runaway productions' describes US film companies that chose to shoot in Canada rather than in the States, spending hundreds of millions up there instead of here. These state based tax laws stopped that.
Any business will operate where the climate is most friendly and for the states involved the decision was that half a loaf was better than none.
Nice try. The residents were sold on tax breaks, not production costs. The end product cost to the consumers did not change and the studios, stars, and production management pick up their portion of the profits. It would just tickle me pink to know I increased the take for someone like Oliver Stone or Spike Lee through my tax dollars than I would not have given to him by paying the going price to view their trash.
Nice try nothing. What I posted is the facts of state level film production tax incentives (explained in as simple a manner as I could). I can’t help it if you don’t understand it.
You’re welcome to come to Tennessee. ;-)
you mean if this law were not in force, we would never see any more films like Escanaba in da Moonlight? :o The horror!
These film subsidies are the biggest dupe of taxpayers by Hollywood. Here in CT, they are costing the state millions and practically nothing comes back in revenues. Kill it.
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