Tag: Film

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free trade & free markets tax policy

How Not To Be in Pictures

Everybody wants to be in pictures, it’s said. Michiganders, who’ve been funding moviemaking with their taxes for years, should try digital cameras and YouTube. The state’s governor, Rick Snyder, has proposed a new budget slicing and dicing the state’s generous (read: foolhardy) film subsidy and tax credit system.

This is called a “blow to Hollywood.” One nifty headline dramatizes the new situation: “Michigan to Hollywood — Get Off My Lawn,” with photo of Clint Eastwood on the porch of his Gran Torino house, wielding a shotgun.

Over the top.

Tax credits and tax subsidies given only to moviemakers are wrong on several grounds, as I’ve argued before (see “Knot Cannibalism” and “Cinema Without Subsidy”). Of course, the red tape and high taxes associated with setting up any business are wrong, too. You may say that the state’s gotta raise funds, but it most definitely shouldn’t kill the geese that lay the eggs, golden or Technicolor.

Taxes should apply equally, all around. Low taxes evenly spread will entice businesses — including moviemakers — into an area, if other locales remain over-taxed and confusing.

Some will cry “jobs!” but the word isn’t magic. Real jobs can be measured. Michigan’s subsidies created mainly temporary part-time jobs for Michiganders. According to a commissioned study, “Michigan spent $378,240.74 per job in 2008; $586,779.18 per job in 2009.”

No film incentive, it turns out, “has generated as much revenues as it has taken from the treasury.”

Cut. Print.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets tax policy too much government

Cinema Without Subsidy

Yesterday I insisted that states stop subsidizing filmmaking. Implied, I hope, was the notion that states needn’t provide tax credits to lure movie shoots to their state, either.

No sooner did I wrap up that argument (with the premature proclamation “end of story”) than I read a fine article on Show Me Daily about how “States Can Entice Businesses and Industries Without Credits.” The article begins talking about making films in Wisconsin, where the tax credits were just cut by two thirds. And yet the state has nabbed some major film efforts.

According to Show Me, “Wisconsin sets a great example. . . .” Every state has something going for it, unique locations, geography, architecture, people, climate, what-have-you. “Firms will locate” where they do for relevant reasons; “they don’t need to be bribed with generous incentive packages.”

But, but, but, but! some will sputter. Film companies are special firms. They start up, inhabit a location for a while, and then vamoose. State regulations and business taxation often makes it very difficult to shoot in a particular place. Filmmakers need special help around encumbering bureaucratic obstacles.

I’m sympathetic. For example, the business-and-occupation taxes that increasing numbers of states are instituting are horrendously burdensome: They take from gross revenues, of all things!

But the proper way around such counter-productive laws is outright repeal, setting up better state revenue programs . . . ones that are not so generally destructive of industry, including the film industry.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Knot Cannibalism!

Midas, in honor of his peasant-turned-king father, King Gordias, dedicated an ox-cart to the gods, tying it with a knot so complex no one could undo it. It was there years later when Alexander of Macedon stopped by, and turned his hand to untying it. He couldn’t. So he took his sword and cut it open.

Some seemingly insoluble problems are best solved by stepping back and “cutting the Gordian knot.”

Take a current knot, fictional cannibalism. The auteur responsible for the gore-fest The Offspring recently sought funding for another cannibalism horror film, to be entitled The Woman.

The funder turned him down. “This film is unlikely to promote tourism in Michigan or to present or reflect Michigan in a positive light,” said the head honcho of the funding institution, the state’s film commission.

Two years ago, that tax-funded organization produced 26 separate efforts. “Isn’t that just amazing?” Commissioner Janet Lockwood gurgled.

But her turning down funding for a horror film, for reasons of content, have let loose a storm of criticism. Some say that when government says “no” to an artistic product on content grounds, that’s censorship.

They are right.

Others say they don’t want their tax dollars going to vile, disgusting depictions of cannibalism and other vices and crimes.

And they are right, too.

The solution? Cut the knot of this problem in one swipe: Governments shouldn’t fund films. End of story. [Roll credits.]

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.