Tax breaks to individual companies result in other North Carolinians paying more than they should to make up for it. This is exactly the kind of crony crap that i despise. Tax cuts should go to everyone equally, which you've repeatedly denounced in the Kansas thread. It's this statist crap that is ruining the country. Pols doing deals with industry cronies in the movie business isn't any different than cronies doing deals for the banks or Warren Buffett. You're actually trying to sell this movie deal as an example of the republican desire for low taxes? Give. Me. A. Break. Low taxes for movie stars.
Every other state that does movie deals found they're a scam. Your numbers are obviously provided by some movie industry insiders, funneled into the NC Commerce dept and then straight to the News and Disturber, trying to justify the public money grab. I don't buy these phony baloney numbers that you dig up. It's the currency of statists, which you show every day, more and more, to be. Thank God the movie companies will stay out. And don't think I didn't notice your reference to Wilmington being a ghost town over this. Really? I don't think it's a ghost town. Do you have pictures of tumbleweeds? It's this type of over the top progressive nonsensical scaremongering bullshit, just like you used in the discrimination case law change, that showed you are a whole lot more left than right. This entire exchange shows that you want a state run economy that cowtows to the sjw crowd. That is antithetical to real republicans.
Once again your are on the wrong side of the math - which just has been proven conclusively when North Carolina lost hundreds of millions in tax revenue when they eliminated the movie tax credit. Now they realize their mistake and are re-instating it two years later.
Let's take a look (once again) at the history of the North Carolina movie tax credit. North Carolina was home to a booming movie and television production industry centered around Wilmington. This industry brought in hundreds of millions of dollars each year from outside our state for hotel stays, meals, personal income tax payments, and other taxes paid during the production of films.
The conservative state legislators decided to eliminate this tax credit because they hated Hollywood and its values (their quote, not mine). They even went so far to say that they would never let Harry Potter film in our state because it was anti-Christian. This all originally started out when a collection of bible-belt Christian groups lobbied legislators to get rid of Hollywood in our state. The legislators decision to eliminate the movie tax credit had nothing to do with financial math for our state but only with their social views (which has been a continuing problem with the legislature).
The N&O, N.C. Commerce Department and others you criticize above actually did the math and outlined very directly how much tax revenue the state would lose due to cutting the movie tax credit. The would lose hundreds of millions of dollars each year in tax revenue for a business tax credit which they only spent tens of millions in rebates.
The estimates of the losses in tax revenue to our state were proven to be exactly correct (nearly to the dime).
After a mere two years, the state had to re-instate the movie tax credit to balance the state budget and prevent a further collapse of employment in our state.
Our state offers many other business tax credits that are industry specific. A large number of these tax credits are agricultural. These twisted conservative rural legislators are farmers (or their friends are) and fully support these other agricultural tax credits -- which are much larger than the movie tax credits in our state while providing very little revenue enhancement from business increases or other taxes collected (hotel, meals, etc.).
I support business tax credits. However government cannot be in the business of picking winners and losers within a particular business niche. Therefore a tax credit should never be for a single specified company but for an entire industry where all the players can take advantage of the credit.
The intent of a business tax credit should be to grow the economy of the state and bring dollars into the state from out of state. Tourism, non-major league sports, and movies are very effective at bringing out of state money into a state. They all generate significant state & county tax revenues from other sources such as hotel taxes and meals taxes while boosting employment and the state's economy.
The elimination of the movie tax credit was simply designed to drive the movie industry out of our state to satisfy the social views for conservative legislators who fail basic math. It had nothing to do with "reforming the tax code" otherwise they would have eliminated all the other business tax credits -- but they support all these other tax credits and simply want to kill the one that supports "evil Hollywood".
Sadly it took 20 years to built up the film industry in Wilmington, the conservative clowns in the state legislature managed to chase off nearly every single production in two years. It will difficult to attract the industry back to our state quickly, but hopefully re-instating the movie tax credit will improve the situation over the upcoming decade. Yet this is scant comfort to the 4400 people who lost fully time jobs directly tied to the movie industry in our state as well as the 6100 who lost part time jobs.
