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Deleting and destroying finished movies

rogerebert.com

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Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#111

Post by lisper »

gruez wrote: post #95
bhpm wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ Nondeductible losses. A casualty loss isn’t deductible, even to the extent the loss doesn’t exceed your personal casualty gains, if the damage or destruction is caused by the following. Accidentally breaking articles such as glassware or china under normal conditions. A family pet (explained below). A fire if you willfully set it, or pay someone else to set it. A car accident if your willful negligence or willful a…

The linked document looks like it's for personal taxes, not corporate taxes. Business taxes is different from personal taxes in many ways, including how deductions are handled. For instance if you buy office 365 personally that can't be deducted, but if you bought it as a business it can.

Sure. Qualified business expenses are deductible. Personal expenses are not deductible, and neither are losses suffered because you willfully destroyed your own property. That is true for businesses as well as individuals.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#112

Post by prepend »

nerdponx wrote: post #55
advael wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the tax writeoff should only be available for doing something like that. It's insane that corporations failing at ventures is so incentivised that they'll fail on purpose, and we shouldn't be offering tax breaks for behavior that serves no public good This kind of law is especially offensive in the context of rhetoric about social programs, wherein we create all sorts of onerous means-testing on the logic tha…

I don't understand the move in the first place. Do tax write offs for corporations work differently than for people? What's the point of spending $90m just to reduce your taxable income by $90m? It's not like corporations have progressive tax brackets. Or did they acquire the movie as part of the acquisition, and are now somehow able to claim a write-off for something they didn't actually spend any money on?

They don’t spent the $90M intending to write it off.

This is a failure mitigation strategy where they failed and want to recoup as much value as possible.

Studios still lose $60M when they write off $90M they are effectively only saving the $30M they would pay in taxes. It’s still not profitable and they want to avoid this as much as possible.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#113

Post by prepend »

verisimi wrote: post #43
blincoln wrote: post #14

Seems like a less controversial solution would be to allow the same tax write-off if the studio releases the film for free distribution (e.g. via the Internet Archive), either into the public domain, or under a license like Creative Commons Noncommercial if there's concern about implicitly allowing derivative works by competitors or similar.

Why are movies given tax breaks at all, is the question.

It’s not specific for movies. All businesses only pay taxes on profit. And the expenses spent to produce things are a “tax break” to offset revenue.

This is done because it’s hard to pay taxes if you don’t make a profit as your money is already spent on other stuff like resources, people, etc.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#114

Post by lisper »

peterleiser wrote: post #105
lisper wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Destroying a movie to claim the tax break is analogous to burning your house down for the insurance money or to claim a casualty loss. Yes, you really did lose your house. No, you are not entitled to claim it as a write-off.

Businesses are allowed to destroy inventory and then write that off. In this case I guess the movie is the inventory.

Only in the case when they can't profitably dispose of that inventory any other way. So unsold books, for example, can be destroyed and deducted, but an unoccupied office building cannot.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#115

Post by advael »

CSMastermind wrote: post #82
advael wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the tax writeoff should only be available for doing something like that. It's insane that corporations failing at ventures is so incentivised that they'll fail on purpose, and we shouldn't be offering tax breaks for behavior that serves no public good This kind of law is especially offensive in the context of rhetoric about social programs, wherein we create all sorts of onerous means-testing on the logic tha…

> It's insane that corporations failing at ventures is so incentivised that they'll fail on purpose, and we shouldn't be offering tax breaks for behavior that serves no public good I believe the argument is that businesses would take less risks without the security provided by those tax write-offs. Presumably the increased tax revenue from businesses taking risks and having success outweighs the tax losses from risks…

Revenue implication makes sense as a priority for a business, it should be considerably less of a priority for a government. The degree to which the tax code subsidizes whatever a business cares to try regardless of the outcome is already clearly more than adequate to give most industries massive lobbying budgets, so I don't think the economy is going to break if we stop doing it. Businesses are already significantly insulated against risks of various kinds, including in many cases criminal liability for risking people's lives. We don't need to be creating perverse incentives in the hopes of making them less risk-averse

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#116

Post by prepend »

lisper wrote: post #36
gruez wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That they actually incurred the losses they claim to have incurred, so they get a tax break. The taxpayer is defrauded. Did they not incur such losses? Did they claim to delete the movie but actually kept a backup? Granted, the loss is self-inflicted, but that's not a relevant factor in the tax code.

Destroying a movie to claim the tax break is analogous to burning your house down for the insurance money or to claim a casualty loss. Yes, you really did lose your house. No, you are not entitled to claim it as a write-off.

> analogous to burning your house down for the insurance money

It’s very different because insurance pays out to make whole. Taxes are just taxes.

It’s the equivalent of burning your house down and then writing off the depreciated value because it burned down. Totally legal. Because it’s worth less after burning it down. Assuming you burn it in a legal, controlled manner and not arson.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#117

Post by lisper »

gruez wrote: post #109
lisper wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no law that specifically prevents it, just as there is no law the specifically prevents you from deducting, say, money that you pay to buy groceries. What there is is a very long list of things you can deduct, and grocery money, and losses that you suffer from willful destruction of your own property, are not on that list.

> What there is is a very long list of things you can deduct, and grocery money, and losses that you suffer from willful destruction of your own property, are not on that list. Actually if you read the sibling comment[1], such list of "things you can't deduct" does exist, albeit it's seemingly for personal taxes. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39339672

That list is advisory. It is not part of the law. I can't point you to a law that says, "You cannot deduct destroyed movies" just as I cannot point you to a law that says, "You cannot deduct grocery expenses."

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#118

Post by s1artibartfast »

the part that I dont understand is why the production costs aren't always deductible, no matter what happens to the movie.

When I run my company, I can deduct labor and material costs. I dont have to resort to any special measured to qualify for them.

Is this about some accelerated ammonization schedule?

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#119

Post by tzs »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #42
delichon wrote: post #2

The contrary argument, that a creator has the right to destroy their creation, is made in the Gary Cooper movie "The Fountainhead" (1949).

Ah, the work of fiction based on an Ayn Rand novel? Considering I'm operating from a very different set of values than she was, I doubt I would find the movie particularly persuasive.

Movies are often as much or more the work of their director as they are the work of the author whose book they are based upon. In this case, a reviewer said this:

> King Vidor turned Ayn Rand's preposterous 'philosophical' novel into one of his finest and most personal films, mainly by pushing the phallic imagery so hard that it surpasses Rand's rightist diatribes

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#120

Post by AlbertCory »

gruez wrote: post #65
AlbertCory wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, if you had an offer for $30M, then that was the value.

And the value went to $0 after destroying it. I don't see what's the issue is here.

If you can't understand accounting, maybe an introductory course would help.
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