BC is doubling down on the film and digital media sector. They are beefing up their incentives to this industry.
Subject to approval by the legislature, the planned tax measures include:
New BC Interactive Digital Media tax credit for video game development of 17.5 per cent of qualifying B.C. labour costs.
Production Services Tax Credit on labour costs for foreign productions increased to 33 per cent from 25 per cent.
Digital Animation or Visual Effects tax credit bonus increased to 17.5 per cent from 15 per cent.
Qualified B.C. labour expenditures cap increased to 60 per cent from 48 per cent of production costs.
Just to translate this a bit. Essentially the government will pay 17.5% of the labour cost for digital media development in the province. That is very substantial. If you pay a developer $60k, the government is paying $10,500 of that person’s salary -each and every year.
This is a case where the market, if left to do its job along with broad based tax relief, would raise salaries even more than such ‘targeted’ government schemes. All government intervention does is allow companies to write in such grants, loans and tax credits. And as we’ve seen in NB, reliance on corporate welfare and government intervention schemes can cause poor businesses to make poor decisions which ultimately lead to disaster, not to mention a big bill for the taxpayers who pay for such ill advised schemes.
For that kind of investment, gov’t would be better off to just sink the money into shares… 17.5 per cent isn’t a tax incentive, it’s a substitute for equity, with all the risks and none of the benefits. and at that level, government can’t eliminate its subsidy without eliminating the jobs.