ACTRA letter to Premier of Saskatchewan;
In recent years Saskatchewan has become a growing center of film and television production excellence, thanks in no small part to the support of the government’s tax credit. To kill this vital tax credit now, at an incredibly vulnerable time in the industry’s growth and development, is to irreparably damage the sector’s prospects beyond its means to recover.
You suggest that since the tax credit’s introduction in 1998 this initiative has cost your government $100 million, yet in 2008/09 alone film and television production in Saskatchewan accounted for nearly $75 million worth of economic activity and created over 1,200 jobs.
Many cherished and beloved Canadian productions such as Corner Gas, Little Mosque on the Prairie…
h/t The Greek
they should have listed Rainbow Country and The Trouble with Tracy.
And why exactly should the province support a production of the CBC which has already scammed the taxpayers for $1B a year? Little Mosque never say the inside of my TV set and other than Hockey neither does CBC. I’m sorry if you can’t make it onyour own, pick another line of work.
Shut artfare proponents down by uttering the word “Nollywood”.
C_Miner: “My question for you is what goods or services are provided to international companies to warrant the taxation loads applied upon them?”
Access, if nothing else. Access to a raw material (which also happens to be a national strategic resource) that they can then convert into a range of products that have made a lot of people a lot of money. As for the taxation load that these companies pay, it might be an issue if they weren’t still managing to reap in record levels of profit year over year despite what they would have you believe (indeed, spend a lot of money in lobbyists and PR consultant fees to ensure you believe) is such an onerous burden.
OK, a forthright answer. Thanks. The current royalty system includes both a percentage based upon the selling price, and another portion based upon the profit (that is, sales price minus applicable mining costs as incurred by the company). The “record profit levels” therefore result in record royalties to the government, which is something that I would have thought is something you’d like.
Force-feeding (or regular beating of) the goose that lays the golden eggs will seldom get you more eggs, the government would be better off IMHO to ensure continued high levels of profit and taking their percentage of that profit. I’d prefer if they’d try to “do” less for us, because I’m of the opinion that government will necessarily be less efficient than the private sector because the way that a private entity grows is to supply something that is wanted at a price that is better than others can offer, while a governmental entity grows the best by expanding their mandate to the point that their department cannot meet all requirements, and therefore needs more funding/people to fulfill their mandate.
Davenport,
Jethro is absolutely right, most of the “subsidies” that are complained about in the oil industry are normal write-offs, and none of the write offs that Greenpeace listed are REFUNDABLE TAX CREDITS – that is tax credits that are paid regardless of if tax was owed.
CCEE, CCDE, CCOGPE, CEC, CCA. All of these “subsidies” are actually expenses that a company can write off against their income. If they can’t, they flow them through to their unitholders to claim on their personal tax returns. Flow through shares are actually the purchase of a piece of a limited partnership that explores or does some other capital intensive project. The Flowthrough spends a bunch of money, and because it can’t use the expenses, it flows them through to the partners (investors) to claim. From the remainder that I read on the Greenpeace website, they are assuming that you’re being subsidized if you are getting a special royalty rate for certain activities and to a point they may be correct, but you have to assume, as the watermelons do, that all money is the government’s and we only get to keep it because of the good-will of the government, and not because we’ve earned the right to have that money.
Parasites …. what else is there to know about ACTRA?
Let’s subsidize the film industry to the tune of $13 billion…. that way, the 13 billion will turn into 130 kabillion jillion dollars worth of “economic activity!”
Posted by: Mike in Calgary
Heh Heh Heh
You nailed it,Mike!
I am a smidge pissed that I will have to pay taxes for your viewing of those ” Prarie” eps though….who put THAT gun to your head?
Davenport @ 7:59 a.m.: “Because using taxpayers’ dollars to fund private sector initiatives is intolerable to you, right?”
Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Subsidization distorts the supply and demand price signals in a free market. Some other commenters have described a complicated situation involving taxes. It should be drastically simplified. I’ve said before that a two or three per cent tax on gross income, without any loopholes, should be considered as a potential corporate tax as opposed to a tax on profits. Zero tax on corporations is another possibility. I’m not sure about things like natural resource royalties because I don’t know much about how the system works.
If only ACTRA can get some support from:
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatt Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamon! of the Film Actors Guild.
Oxygentax: “Jethro is absolutely right, most of the “subsidies” that are complained about in the oil industry are normal write-offs…”
Except that the industry gets special treatment under each of those tax expenditures categories, so they are not “normal” in that they don’t apply across the board.
Which might be fine, if you are OK with government providing tax incentives to some industries (e.g., oil sands, SK film and television production) but not to others. But if you’re against that as a matter of principle, well then, shouldn’t you be against that, equally, with the same vigour, wherever it manifests?