"Bill aims to woo Broadway-bound shows" by Geoff Edgers | Globe Staff, February 03, 2013
Eager to revive Boston’s status as a regular testing ground for big-name Broadway musicals, legislators are proposing a tax credit for producers who bring shows to the state before heading to the Great White Way.
The credit would grant up to $3 million to a production that plays in Massachusetts before opening in New York or to a touring show that starts here, reimbursing up to 35 percent of its state labor costs.
This as they are raising taxes and cutting services while selling you austerity, folks. I've said it many times, and I'll say it again; despite the propaganda of image and illusion, this Democrat-dominated state government exists to $erve the wealthy and elite. This is about funding their Broadway shows they want to attend.
Advocates of the proposal say the credits would create hundreds of jobs and drive millions of dollars of business into Massachusetts.
We have heard this all before, and it's always a damn lie.
But critics of the bill compare it to the state’s controversial film tax credit program, arguing that the costs are not worth the benefits. There is also some question about how much business would actually be spurred through credits, and there is no protection if a show dies before it gets to New York....
State representatives Nick Collins of Boston and Paul McMurtry of Dedham filed a theater tax credit bill on Jan. 17. The two Democrats say they want Boston once again to thrive as a tryout ground for Broadway productions.
In the past, such shows as “Annie Get Your Gun,” “Anything Goes,” and “Oklahoma!” first took the stage here. But Josiah Spaulding Jr., president of the Citi Center for the Performing Arts, and Richard Jaffe, vice president of Broadway in Boston, point out that in recent years — as Louisiana, Illinois, and Rhode Island have passed such tax credits — it has become harder to recruit those high-profile test runs for Massachusetts.
Because they threw tax money away we have to?
“It’s of great economic benefit to the state,” Jaffe said. “It’s also not reinventing the wheel. We just want to get it back going again.”
But Tom Viertel — a longtime New York producer whose shows have included the original Broadway productions of “The Producers,” “Hairspray,” and “Angels in America” — said that tax credits alone will not allay concerns about Boston’s market.
“The problem is that in order to do a good job with a pre-Broadway show, you have to be able to keep it in front of an audience for close to a month while you work on it,” Viertel said. “The daunting aspect, from a producer’s point of view, is, ‘Can Boston really provide a month’s worth of audiences?’ Even with the tax credits, Boston may be a little limited as to what it can attract.”
Which means this is really what I said it was: the $ervicing of $pecial intere$t$ and concern$.
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The tax credit program has lured work to Louisiana, including a 2011 run of “The Addams Family” that opened its national tour at the Mahalia Jackson Theater in New Orleans, according to officials there.
“It’s absolutely driven business to the state,” said Chris Stelly, executive director of the Louisiana Office of Entertainment Industry Development. “It gives us an edge. It is intriguing for the live-performance world, and now they have a fiscal incentive to test it out.”
Yes, it is amazing how the lure of tax money will always bring $omeone.
In Rhode Island, which passed a tax credit last year, programmers at the Providence Performing Arts Center say they are already seeing results.
Yeah, how did that video game investment work out?
J. Lynn Singleton, the center’s president and chief executive, said that he believes he was able to lure the Broadway musical “Elf” to begin its tour in Providence late last year largely because of the tax credit. He said he is currently in talks to open a series of national touring shows.
How much of a difference will the tax credit make?
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In Massachusetts, it is unclear how much opposition Collins and McMurtry will face in the Legislature, where the bill is a long way from being debated. In upcoming months, it will be assigned to a House committee and scheduled for a public hearing, McMurtry said.
The state’s film tax credit, signed into law in 2007, has proved controversial. That credit offers to reimburse companies for up to a quarter of their spending in the state. It has led to a wave of major film projects in Massachusetts and to the state paying out more than $171 million in credits.
That's a tax check written right to the production company, folks.
Also see: Massachusetts Lets Hollywood Roll Credits
So if they don't use them they can sell them to rich individuals and corporations so they can lower their tax bills?
No Hurray For Hollywood in Massachusetts
Not from me, and I hope you can $ee why.
Critics have questioned whether the subsidies are worth the cost, mainly because the temporary jobs created are largely filled by out-of-state workers. The Department of Revenue has reported that the subsidy costs the state an average of $142,000 per job per year.
That's because you are PAYING the HIGH-PRICED STAR ACTORS' SALARIES, taxpayers! This as you have endured tax increases and budget cuts.
In addition, film companies have been able to sell their credits to corporations and wealthy individuals who want to lower their tax bills. The same would be true with the theater proposal, Jaffe said.
Is that really where you want your tax money going?
Deirdre Cummings, the legislative director for the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, does not want any new tax credits until there is a proper study done to determine the value of existing credits.
“There are some 200 various tax breaks, credits, and giveaways to businesses and individuals,” she said. “We ought not to be adding to those until we know about what’s on the books now. Maybe there are great ones we should invest more in and some that aren’t working as well.”
That’s a feeling echoed by state Senator James B. Eldridge, Democrat of Acton, who also opposes the film tax credit.
“I do love theater,” he said. “I just think right now we’re making difficult decisions about budget cuts, and in this kind of fiscal environment, the idea of any new tax credit is a challenge.”
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“We need this credit,” Spaulding said. “Illinois has one. Louisiana has one. And if we can’t get one, we won’t be able to attract pre-Broadway shows again. Producers want to come here. But it’s becoming harder and harder to attract the business.”
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I'm wondering how many cops, teachers, and firefighters will have to be laid off to pay for the Broadway show tax credits and checks.
Related:
"A guaranteed flop for Mass.; Why the state’s plan for tax giveaways for Broadway-bound shows won’t work" by Jeff Jacoby | Globe Columnist, February 06, 2013
The Massachusetts film tax credit program has been a flop, a taxpayer rip-off that enriches one of the nation’s most profitable industries while choking off funds from more pressing public needs. Naturally, some legislators are now eager for a sequel.
The Bay State has been lavishing corporate welfare on movie producers and Hollywood actors since 2006. It gives production companies a 25 percent tax credit on anything they spend to make a film or TV show in Massachusetts — credits they can sell for cash to third parties. Like most schemes that use public funds to bribe industries into doing business in Massachusetts, the film tax credit program has been a loss-maker from the outset. The Department of Revenue’s most recent annual report on the program noted that while filmmakers in 2010 collected $14.6 million in tax credits, their productions generated only $800,000 in new state revenue. That amounted to a paltry 5 cents of tax revenue for every $1 in tax credits the commonwealth gave away. (In 2009, Massachusetts awarded credits worth $83.3 million, but reaped only $10.4 million in revenue —12 cents of tax revenue for every $1 in subsidies.)
Nor have the film credits put thousands of residents to work, though they are regularly touted as a stimulus for employment. The Revenue Department attributed no net jobs to the tax credits in 2010, and only 222 jobs the year before. Those jobs, many lasting just weeks or months, didn’t come cheap: They cost the taxpayers an estimated $142,000 apiece. (The state’s latest report, with data updated through 2011, has not yet been released.)
Film tax credits are based on a kind of voodoo economics — a faith that the more revenue the state manages to lose to Hollywood, the better off the public will end up. “Lawmakers understand that cutting income tax rates from 6 percent to 5 percent will cost the state revenue,” economics writer Josh Barro observes, yet they imagine “that cutting the tax rate on film productions to negative 25 percent or 40 percent can pay for itself.”
This is public policy as it might look if it were devised by Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, the seedy theatrical producer and timid accountant in Mel Brooks’s farce “The Producers.”
“Under the right circumstances,” muses Bloom, “a producer could make more money with a flop than he could with a hit. Yes, it’s quite possible. If he were certain the show would fail, a man could make a fortune.”
Bialystock: “You keep saying that, but you don’t tell me how. How could a producer make more money with a flop than with a hit?”
Bloom: “It’s simply a matter of creative accounting.”
Having swallowed such “creative accounting” when it comes to films and TV shows, Massachusetts policymakers are now being urged to do the same thing for theatrical productions. A bill introduced on Beacon Hill would grant up to $3 million in tax credits for Broadway-bound shows that play in Massachusetts before moving to New York or a national tour. “Advocates of the proposal,” the Globe reported this week, “say the credits would create hundreds of jobs and drive millions of dollars of business in Massachusetts.” Now where have we heard that before?
Local theater honchos are warning, of course, that unless the Legislature showers them with a lucrative new subsidy, Massachusetts can kiss big stage productions goodbye. “We need this credit,” the Citi Center’s Josiah Spaulding Jr. told the Globe. “Illinois has one. Louisiana has one. And if we can’t get one, we won’t be able to attract pre-Broadway shows again.”
Uh-huh. That is what rent-seeking special pleaders — sports team owners, mutual-fund companies, video-game makers, solar-energy firms, filmmakers — always claim. And almost invariably the subsidies and benefits and tax breaks they clamor for turn out in the end to be what the critics predicted: ill-advised corporate welfare that costs far more than it generates. (See under: 38 Studios. Or Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. Or Evergreen Solar. Or Nortel Networks.)
Film tax credits have not paid for themselves in Massachusetts, nor have they nurtured a permanent state-based moviemaking sector. What they have done is siphoned off millions of dollars from legitimate government services — education, public safety, mental health — in a fruitless quest for glitz, popularity, and a free lunch. And now we have legislators who want tax giveaways for Broadway-bound shows? That’s one flop that ought to close before it ever opens.
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Also see: Massachusetts' Lost Decade of Jobs
Those Are the (Tax) Breaks in Massachusetts
Are you really getting your money's worth, Massachusetts taxpayers?
