Your business already gets 25 cents on the dollar from the taxpayers of New Mexico and now you want a veritable monopoly on state contracts? As a taxpayer, I’d love to get my money back from the film industry (hundreds of dollars of direct subsidies per taxpayer over the years). I also question whether the state needs to use my money to pay for statewide advertising to subsidize the tourism industry. Couldn’t tourism-dependent businesses do a better job themselves? But that is another story.
IF the state is going to create these ad campaigns, they should find the best, most cost-effective company, regardless of geography, and go with them (that goes for all government contracts). Demanding that such contracts be handled in-state is yet another subsidy. Perhaps, we could kill two birds with one stone and reduce the subsidy rate in exchange for a pledge to film all future ad campaigns in New Mexico with in-state talent? I doubt they’d go for it, but it is worth a shot and it would be fairer to the beleaguered taxpayer who is currently paying twice. In a rational world, the film industry would be thanking their lucky starts for the forced generosity of New Mexico’s taxpayers.
Hey, New Mexico Taxation and Revenue, I want a refund of 25 % of the NM income tax I paid to your communistic state government last year. Oh, and a refund of 25 % of the state income taxes for all prior years. Hurry up. Send me my money. If you are going to steal my money and give it away to useless liberal “Hobby-businesses”, I want it back. Go tax liberals extra to make up for the loss of my money since they obviously want to give money to this useless band of hobby players and call them “businesses”.
The tax “incentive” (read: blackmail) business is a zero sum game everywhere in the world. Corporations play cities, states, and nations off one another in order to steal tax dollars up front via subsidies and then on the back end via tax breaks. Tax payers should not be subsidizing the Corporate Sector in any way shape or form. Governments need those tax dollars to pay for schools, roads, police, garbage pickup…
The USA can no longer afford to hand Corporations any more cash at the taxpayer’s expense.