From the Charlotte Business Journal:
Not to worry, filmmakers and TV commercial producers. North Carolina will have something for you after the state’s existing film incentives expire later this year.
The question is what those incentives will look like, N.C. Secretary of Commerce Sharon Decker says.
Plans are to have legislation ready for the short session of the General Assembly, with hopes that there will be no gap in state film incentives.
“I am encouraged and optimistic” about the film industry discussions, she said today in Charlotte. The N.C. tax credit, which provides a 25 percent tax break, will expire on Jan. 1, 2015, unless it’s renewed.
“It’s an issue that is great concern to us because the film industry is very important to North Carolina,” Decker said. “It is an industry that has impacted both our cities and our small communities.”
Apparently, other industries aren’t “important” enough to receive such favored tax status. If the film tax credit is such a success, why not extend it to all businesses?
This is disappointing news, as the granting of political privilege not only makes bad economics because it distorts the market’s process of allocating scarce resources to their most highly value uses, but more importantly it represents a further consolidation of power out of the hands of the citizenry and into the hands of the ruling class.
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