More on the Film Tax Incentive

By Steve Poftak
May 27th, 2008

They’re back!!

The Globe’s been strongly on the film tax incentive beat over the past few days. They took notice of DOR’s dynamic analysis of the film tax credit from last week (original document here). Its key findings:

…[B]ased on information from tax credit and sales tax exemption applications, which indicates that wages and salaries for employees paid more than $1 million account for approximately 45% of total payroll projected to be eligible for tax credits.

and

the film industry tax incentives….in this analysis are estimated to generate offsetting tax revenue of $17.9 million to $23.0 million for each $100 million tax expenditure

In other words, a huge chunk of the tax credits go to out-of-state movie stars, and the return to the state (from all potential multiplier effects) is a fraction of the tax expenditure.

Oh, and its also subsidizing the filming of advertisements as well.