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Extras needed for protest against planned cut in state moviemaking credit
By adamg on Sat, 02/27/2010 - 1:17pm
Craig Goedecke reports on a protest planned for this coming Wednesday at the State House against a bill that would reduce the amount of tax credits available for moviemakers in Massachusetts:
... While the bill does not eliminate the film tax credit, it is equally disastrous. They will have lots of people testifying to rollback the film credit: in turn this could have a negative impact going forward for our efforts to preserve the credit, and keep films rolling. WE NEED TO MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD! WE NEED TO BE THE OPPOSITION! LET'S ALL RALLY BEHIND THE MASS FILM TAX CREDIT!!! Bring your cameras! Wear your crew/union shirts! Let’s show them "FILM CREDITS=JOBS"!!! THE MORE PEOPLE THAT ATTEND THIS… THE STRONGER WE BECOME!THE BATTLE FOR HOLLYWOOD EAST BEGINS NOW! ...
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Comments
Yes
Yes! Cutting the benefit from "no limit" to a $7 million limit would be disasterous. What would Tom Cruise do if he could only make $7 million and not $20 million. Think of the children!!
It's even more modest than that.
That's not even what the bill proposes. Tom Cruise can still be paid whatever ridiculous sums the company is able to negotiate for, the bill merely puts a cap on how much in tax credits each film production can get. (And some other cuts regarding what percentage of costs qualify for credits, which I haven't bothered to compare with the existing law because I don't really care.) Furthermore, it's always been a non-refundable tax credit, so the cap only comes into play if you pay over seven million dollars in Massachusetts taxes rather than "merely" paying seven million dollars for the budget of the film itself.
While I agree with your point on the salary rebates,
without it, "Knight and Day" would have moved to Atlanta. They spent a lot of money here that would have gone south, but I do agree with John that actors salaries should not be part of the program. In speaking with producers, even they admit it's a Catch-22. Pay the rebate on the salaries or they move the production elsewhere, leave it in and we're on the hook for 25% of Tom Cruise's reported 20 million dollar salary on the aforementioned movie, as I understand it. And that ain't fair. I may be shooting myself in the foot here, but I believe the rebates should be on technical and logistical production costs only, and not actors salaries.