depauldem

Just to clarify, Pennsyvania's film incentive does not make more money for the state than it costs. All of the reports prepared by the state's film office show way more is doled out than is returned in new taxes: http://filminpa.com/resources/industry-analysis-reports/ On "The Last Airbender", for example, the state paid out over $37 million and got back just $10 million from all of the economic output from the production (yes, that included the ripple effects too). Just on that one film, it's a loss of $27 million: http://www.stop-runaway-production.com/2012/09/14/film-incentives-101-they-have-little-to-do-with-taxes/ Also, all wages paid to ABL or BTL qualify for the program regardless of worker residency. So yes, Penn is subsidizing the wages for nonresidents (not to mention their travel to the state and their lodging). And the state does, in fact, pay for good and services from out of state vendors....so long as the transaction takes place in the state. Rather than rent props in NY, the prop house gets opens a shell office or files as a llc, ships in the props and gets paid for them in Penn rather than NY. It's literally that simple. The worst abuse of the program I know of was a $70 million expense that was covered for VFX work done by ILM in Northern California. None of the work ever took place in Penn, but they opened a temp office and took payment there so it qualified. And poof, just like that roughly $17 million was paid out on that expense for work done entirely in California.