Lawmakers’ Hollywood Dreams Hurting Taxpayers: The Case Against Film Incentives

With the film industry clamoring for additional tax breaks, it is worth asking whether such targeted tax breaks actually work.

As we’ve written before, targeted tax incentives do not result in long-term economic growth. For certain industries, however, targeted tax breaks are especially ineffective. Our analysis of tax breaks for retailers found that such incentives do not create new jobs. Likewise, numerous academic studies have demonstrated that film incentives result in little benefit to taxpayers.