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Deleting and destroying finished movies

rogerebert.com

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Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#121

Post by lisper »

prepend wrote: post #116
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.

> 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.

Every tax dollar you don't pay is a dollar someone else has to pay instead, or a dollar that gets added to the national debt. And burning your house down and writing off the depreciated value is absolutely not legal.

> Assuming you burn it in a legal, controlled manner and not arson.

Yes, well, that is a might big assumption. I doubt you could point me to a single instance of someone actually burning down their house in a "legal, controlled manner".

It ultimately boils down to details. If there really were a legitimate reason to destroy a film (or a house) rather than selling it to the highest bidder then you might have a case. But you'd be very hard-pressed to come up with a set of legitimate circumstances for either one.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#122

Post by AlbertCory »

sokoloff wrote: post #107
AlbertCory wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confusing "not releasing it" with "claiming a value of zero."

If they irretrievably destroy it, its value becomes zero. That's the essence of being able to claim the tax loss (to "finally determine the value"). It's no different from having a stock position in a company that's in limbo. You can't claim the tax loss and keep the position. You have to get the clearinghouse to take the position for $0 in order to claim the loss. The studio's position is that they've already incurr…

In the IRS's eyes, you destroyed an item that had value. Its value was whatever someone was willing to pay for it. Say $30M.

If you destroyed it, that was your choice, but you didn't thereby incur a loss of $30M. Any more than if you had dynamited your HQ building.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#123

Post by s1artibartfast »

nerdponx wrote: post #76
loughnane wrote: post #52

Commenting before I've read the article: That's ridiculous. There's no obligation for anyone to bring something to market regardless of how far along it is. After I read the article: Still not persuaded. It reads like motivated reasoning, the person doesn't like things not getting released and says that governments should step in. There's some mention of taxes and lost work, but nothing tht holds water. As an example…

If $15m of taxpayer money is being paid out as a write-off for a finished movie, I feel like I as a taxpayer should have the right to see the movie. Nobody is forcing anyone to sell anything.

Taxpayers arent paying anything, Taxes are on profit after costs. The company spent 90M of its own money, and hasn't made any income?

Why souldnt they be able the claim the 90m they spent as an expense?

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#124

Post by BobaFloutist »

kuratkull wrote: post #84
BobaFloutist wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm of the opposite opinion... now what?

Now you're welcome to find it persuasive?

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#125

Post by gruez »

lisper wrote: post #111
gruez wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, and the studio is deducting all the resources it spent making the movie. If you decide to invest in a bunch of money into developing a product, and then not commercialize it, all the r&d money that went into it is still deductible. It gets tricky when amortization and accruals are involved, but in the end it's approximately the same principle.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#126

Post by chx »

fl7305 wrote: post #41
chx wrote: post #12

I wonder, is it even possible to truly delete a movie? I am surprised Batgirl didn't leak. How do you even prevent that? It's just bits.

> How do you even prevent that? Keep the working copies on computers in a special lab with no external network access. Restrict access and physically search the people leaving the lab. Not fool proof, but it will reduce leaks by a lot. But yeah, once you send out thousands of review copies, there's no stopping the leaks.

But usually a movie is worked on by multiple VFX companies and whatnot.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#127

Post by AlbertCory »

Terr_ wrote: post #72
fl7305 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is the artist to be prohibited from destroying the painting Perhaps not prohibited. But we could make it so they lose all IP rights. Copyright is intended to promote the creation and distribution of new works. It is not a natural human right, like ownership of your physical things.

> Perhaps not prohibited. But we could make it so they lose all IP rights. I'm not sure how that would work. Suppose I make two draft comics of my original character ExampleMan. One features a dark brooding morally ambiguous anti-hero, and the other is a wholesome family character. Are you saying if I destroy one draft and publish the other, the character comes partially or wholly into the public domain? Or that I am…

Good points. Normally, your discarded drafts are just written off as the cost of creating the keeper. It's not worth anyone's time to put them all out for bid.

However, for a really big project, there's a "salvage value" or "scrap value." It's not zero.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#128

Post by AlbertCory »

zoky wrote: post #92
AlbertCory wrote: post #22

Where do you draw the line? If an artist pays a model and paints her, is the artist to be prohibited from destroying the painting because it sucks, and because the model wants credit? What about a music producer who pays a studio band to record a song that turns out to be terrible -- is the producer prohibited from deleting it? It's the tax write off for destruction that's fucked up, as @cnees says. Failures are part…

> The solution to their "attribution" problem was found by directors a long time ago when they didn't want their names on a film: it's directed by "Alan Smithee." That’s not exactly how that works. A director can’t just decide to take their name off a film because they don’t like it. They have to petition the DGA for permission to do so, which is only granted in the event that the director can show that the producers…

Your point, whether you realize it or not, is that Hollywood is heavily unionized. The contracts that all the talent sign specify who owns the final product, and what will happen to it if it's a bust.

So that's the real answer. The unions have to make this an issue. Or maybe they already have.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#129

Post by [deleted] »

gruez wrote: post #104
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren't arguing that it's tax fraud by definition, but that it should be considered fraud. If the tax code incentivizes destroying something then that seems like a defect of the tax code.

If you re-read my prior comment, you'd see my complaint is that it's not "fraud" by any reasonable definition because deception is not involved, not that it should or should not be allowed. > "fraud" doesn't mean "losing money in a manner I don't like", so I ask again: where's the deception here?

[deleted]

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#130

Post by gruez »

AlbertCory wrote: post #122
sokoloff wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they irretrievably destroy it, its value becomes zero. That's the essence of being able to claim the tax loss (to "finally determine the value"). It's no different from having a stock position in a company that's in limbo. You can't claim the tax loss and keep the position. You have to get the clearinghouse to take the position for $0 in order to claim the loss. The studio's position is that they've already incurr…

In the IRS's eyes, you destroyed an item that had value. Its value was whatever someone was willing to pay for it. Say $30M. If you destroyed it, that was your choice, but you didn't thereby incur a loss of $30M. Any more than if you had dynamited your HQ building.

>If you destroyed it, that was your choice, but you didn't thereby incur a loss of $30M. Any more than if you had dynamited your HQ building.

Where's the line between "dynamited your HQ building" and "investing money into FTX"? Both are intentional activities that leads to total loss of value, but I think most people would agree that the latter is tax deductible.

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