With 2025 being a legislative year in Texas, Hollywood actors are pushing to have the State of Texas fund incentives to help movie productions locate their projects in Texas. Here is a recent post that explains more about it.
With 2025 being a legislative year in Texas, Hollywood actors are pushing to have the State of Texas fund incentives to help movie productions locate their projects in Texas. Here is a recent post that explains more about it.
My thoughts may not be popular, but why should the state fund them (or should I say why should I fund them, I pay taxes)? Will the state be a partner and collect part of the proceeds?
I feel the same way about sports teams. What about the federal government funding research (vaccines and drugs) where the drug company gets to keep all the profits? This goes for any funding. If the people fund it (government), then the people should get part of the profit.
After all, not everyone benefits from a sports team, movies in a state, etc. Why shouldn't they if they fund them?
If businesses want the sports team, the filming of movies, etc. why don't they fund them?
Ok, I may not have a popular view, but after all, they are asking us help fund their big profits. I've never seen my taxes go down because we've got so much business going on from funding these things, but I have seen them go up!
I think the prevailing opinion is that they want to keep the business local. Therefore, by adding incentives, they can ensure that those businesses don't go somewhere else where incentives are offered.
There's a similar issue with most cities having economic development, corporations, or other economic development departments. These entities will give sales tax rebates or some other form of tax incentive to companies to set up shop within the city limits. Sometimes the deal works out and the company is able to collect on the reimbursements. Other times the deal doesn't work out for the company and they forego the incentive as they made more money doing something different than the agreement.
My biggest criticism is that these types of incentives are usually towards companies or people who already have money. If nobody offered incentives, they would still have to choose somewhere to set up the shop. And let's say that a city is poor and doesn't have the resources to give up sales tax, if the company still wants to set up shop, they will without the incentive. Now things are to the point where companies automatically ask for tax incentives just because they know that they can get somebody to budge simply by asking.