If no one is allowed to see these films how can we be sure they exist? Or that it has any quality to it? And how much of the write off is actually related to the production of the movie?
Hollywood is known for doing shady things in order to avoid paying other parties royalties by claiming that the film lost money. They do this by having a shell company owned by the studio loan itself money with high interest and sell itself stuff at a high markup. In this way these extra costs greatly exceed the cost of the movie itself.
So, if I decide to create an independent film studio and make what is essentially a home movie while selling myself paper cups at $10 each and so on should I be allowed to tell the IRS that I lost $100 Million goofing off?
I feel that the simplest approach here is to require that, in order to get a tax write off for a creative work, the studio must sign over the rights to the film to the public domain. After all, if the tax payers are expected to foot the bill they should be allowed to own it. This would ensure that no media is truly lost and also ensure that the film in question is actually real.
Additionally, I feel that something should be done about Hollywood accounting. A company should not be allowed to sell itself products at an insane markup just to say that it lost money and therefore deserves a tax write-off. That should be treated as tax fraud and prosecuted as such.
Now, in regards to a streaming service removing content already made available to the public and then claiming that by not putting it on it's streaming platform it's lost money? That should not be allowed at all, but if it does, it should also go into the public domain immediately. If Disney wants to write off $1.5 Billion because it doesn't want to do anything with it's IP that IP should be immediately lost.
I guarantee that if studios were required to give up all rights to films there would be a sharp decrease in this kind of thing.
If no one is allowed to see these films how can we be sure they exist? Or that it has any quality to it? And how much of the write off is actually related to the production of the movie?
Hollywood is known for doing shady things in order to avoid paying other parties royalties by claiming that the film lost money. They do this by having a shell company owned by the studio loan itself money with high interest and sell itself stuff at a high markup. In this way these extra costs greatly exceed the cost of the movie itself.
So, if I decide to create an independent film studio and make what is essentially a home movie while selling myself paper cups at $10 each and so on should I be allowed to tell the IRS that I lost $100 Million goofing off?
I feel that the simplest approach here is to require that, in order to get a tax write off for a creative work, the studio must sign over the rights to the film to the public domain. After all, if the tax payers are expected to foot the bill they should be allowed to own it. This would ensure that no media is truly lost and also ensure that the film in question is actually real.
Additionally, I feel that something should be done about Hollywood accounting. A company should not be allowed to sell itself products at an insane markup just to say that it lost money and therefore deserves a tax write-off. That should be treated as tax fraud and prosecuted as such.
Now, in regards to a streaming service removing content already made available to the public and then claiming that by not putting it on it's streaming platform it's lost money? That should not be allowed at all, but if it does, it should also go into the public domain immediately. If Disney wants to write off $1.5 Billion because it doesn't want to do anything with it's IP that IP should be immediately lost.
I guarantee that if studios were required to give up all rights to films there would be a sharp decrease in this kind of thing.