9mo ago

Keir Starmer pins economic growth hopes on British Hollywood with new tax relief

www.independent.co.uk

11 comments

Brollywood?
- Brollywood is an excellent pun.
  British Hollywood - a portmanteau.
  Brolly Wood - brolly is an umbrella in British slang.
  Sorry for dissecting this frog. I just want to make sure everyone can appreciate how delicious the pun is.
  
  Terrified this will now actually catch on.
- If we assume that Ingerland is an acceptable spelling of England (and no other nation exists in the UK 😠) then how about Inglewood?
  That way we'll be immortalised by 2pac in the same song as Hollywood!
Pinning your hopes on tax relief on Hollywood when Hollywood is perfectly fine pushing the absolute limit of whats legal with their finances seems as daft as his carbon capture scheme. Hollywood is quite prepared to cancel or delete even expensively made content because it will make them more money as a tax rebate than with residuals or marketing costs.
Even if they don't out right cancel it, we end up subsidising bombs like the $50m tax break wasted on Ant-Man and Wasp or $55m for Marvels that lost Disney $300m ish.
Giving them more tax rebates is also dumb because you are competing any number of other places for who can be the cheapest to work at with the largest tax breaks, its not a sustainable marketplace. Its much like the countries who offer Nike incentives to come build a factory there.
We need more taxation not less of it!
- We need a tax system that takes not just the headlines into account but assess the relative benefits of various degrees of tax in various industries and individuals vs what they can or can't contribute back in terms of other economic activity that benefits the economy as a whole.
  Simply saying we need more tax (or less if you're Liz Truss inclined) is a, frankly, GCSE level of understanding of the economy and should be discouraged.
  
  We need the wealthy to be taxed more
- Fact is, if you're not tax competitive in the movie business then production shifts somewhere else. However, a single production can employ thousands of people across a multitude of companies, all of whom pay tax.
  What matters is the overall tax take, not the tax rate.

11 comments