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Was Gaining Massive Productions, Such As “Iron Man 3” And

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was gaining massive productions, such as “Iron Man 3” and “Homeland”. This all changed in 2014 when state legislators chose to mostly abandon their tax credit program in lieu of using the money to lower their corporate tax rates. Their film industry crashed almost overnight. Nearly all film productions went to surrounding states like Louisiana and Georgia, leaving North Carolina filmless. There have been efforts to rejuvenate the film industry, such as a 10 million film grant passed in 2015, however, many fear the damage is irreparable. Lowering the corporate tax rates, though a great idea in of itself, is not a suitable replacement for the current film tax credit program due to the devastating amount of damage it would do to the film …show more content…

The Pittsburgh Courier gives a great example of why this is. Think of it like this, if you had a coupon for 10 dollars’ worth of free food (this would be the tax credit) and then sold that coupon for 8 dollars of actual money. Because you saw the 8 dollars as more valuable than the 10 dollars’ worth of free food (since the coupon/tax credit isn’t actual money, there is a loss of 2 dollars of value. Over time, this has led to around 27 million dollars in tax payer’s dollars to be lost, however, this number doesn’t mean tax credits shouldn’t be sellable (Shoemaker; Holmberg).
As a matter of fact, they must be and it’s in their nature. Lisa Smith-Reed, when I asked her about the selling of tax credits, stated, “Every industry sells tax credits that they cannot use to other companies whether or not that company is in their particular line of business.” It’s incredibly difficult to use the entirety of a Pennsylvania tax credit when the film company awarded the credit resides in a different state. In a way, the ability to sell the tax credit is more of an incentive to productions than the tax credit itself. Dawn Keezer, in an interview with public source, went as far to say that the selling of these tax credits is a boon, because not only does it bring productions to Pennsylvania, it also helps corporations in Pennsylvania on their taxes, and since all these companies (whether it is the film productions selling these tax credits, or the companies buying

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