KEVIN SPACEY - MASSACHUSETTS DEBATES TAX INCENTIVES FOR STUDIOS

Producer Dana Brunetti has acknowledged that he and fellow producer Kevin Spacey had originally planned to film most of his gambling movie 21 in Toronto or Chicago until he was lured to Massachusetts by a $5-million tax credit. Brunetti told Bloomberg News that the other incentives were significantly less attractive and that Boston offered a better setting since the true story concerned a group of MIT card sharks. Nevertheless, the tax credits that the filmmakers received have sparked political debate over the role of government in supporting private businesses. "There's something obscene about giving Hollywood producers, with all their money, a tax break," Republican state Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei told the news service. And Michael Widme r, "president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation in Boston, said, "We're not getting sufficient payback of this as an investment." Bloomberg reported that in the past two years the state has contributed $138 million to 88 film ventures and generated $544 million in wages and other production spending. Nicholas Paleologos, head of the Massachusetts Film Office observed that that amount doesn't include such things as additional wages for workers at hotels serving film crews.

24/04/2008