Comment by noja
6 hours ago
Why though? I thought Hollywood had their own accounting rules which always meant movies made a loss. What are they paying the tax on?
6 hours ago
Why though? I thought Hollywood had their own accounting rules which always meant movies made a loss. What are they paying the tax on?
Tax incentives these days include transferable tax credits. Even if your net tax rate was 0%, you can sell the credit to someone else, typically a bank. IOW, states and countries give you money, not simply give you a tax rate break.
What kind of dystopian fuckery is that?
It reminds me of the eBay market in bulk lots of used scratch-offs harvested from the trash:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2016/01/14/powerball...
Hollywood accounting rules are regular accounting rules (GAAP). The only reason “Hollywood accounting” is a thing is because of a bunch of actors who didn’t know the difference between “gross” and “net” points got screwed over.
Everyone involved still pays their taxes, but the special purpose vehicle used to organize the production is essentially a passthrough entity.
If you’re not a name, you’re not getting gross points. There’s a wide swathe of participants (actors, writers, directors…) who need to demonstrate risk by taking net points to get signed, and they are routinely screwed by tactics like artificially inflated self-dealing distribution fees that cause the “production” itself to show a paper loss while the IP has generated hundreds of millions of dollars more than has been invested into it.
Movie Money Understanding Hollywood's (creative) Accounting Practices 9781879505865 This is THE book on the subject. There's a lot more to it than that. Sometimes productions get creatively charged by the studios costs that may not be directly related to shift losses. Sometimes contracts redefine common terms so your points structure is completely misleading.
I presume that what happens is if a movie is too profitable, other business expenses are shifted to the ledger to reduce the profits. This works because a movie is not a separate accounting entity.
>This works because a movie is not a separate accounting entity.
Each movie is set up as a separate legal business entity (LLC). That's the SPV (special purpose vehicle). https://www.google.com/search?q=each+hollywood+movie+is+a+se...
There's also a separate LLC for the parent production company. The production company LLC can also send invoices to the individual movie LLC for services. People can get creative with production companies "overcharging" for various expenses back to the movie's LLC but whatever creative accounting they want to do still needs to ultimately satisfy IRS scrutiny if there's an audit. There are entertainment attorneys that specialize in movie LLCs.
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