SAG Seeks Renewed California Tax Credit As Entertainment Work Is Pulled From The State

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/12963

Submitted by Doug Cunningham on February 17, 2010 - 4:55pm
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By Doug Cunningham

In California the Screen Actors Guild wants to convince state lawmakers to renew and fully fund a tax credit to keep the entertainment business in the state. Nancy Fox is national director of government relations and policy for the Screen Actors Guild. She says in recent years entertainment “runaway production” leaving California has become an issue for SAG members there as other states offered tax incentives to lure the work away.

: “What we started seeing over the last, probably eight years, is tax credits being offered in other states in the United States and pulling work away from California. Work that was traditionally there started moving to places like New Mexico, New York, Michigan."

Fox says SAG is happy to see its members outside of California get work, but the entertainment industry base in California has to be shored up and not taken for granted. She says most tax-incentive work is union, wherever it happens in the country. And as the union lobbies for a renewal of California’s entertainment industry tax incentive, Fox says it’s important to realize that it benefits the state as well as entertainment industry workers.

: “This actually is not a drain on the state. And you want to make sure that people understand that, because we've had one study that showed for every dollar the state spends on a tax credit, a dollar ninety came back immediately in tax revenue."