A.J. Boles unlocks a large trailer and lowers its stairs.
Boles owns Above the Line Production Rentals in North Reading, which rents out trailers like this and other vehicles to the movie industry.
Inside, it looks more like an apartment than a trailer. There’s a living room and a nice kitchen, a gas stove and a refrigerator.
Boles started the company after Massachusetts started giving film and TV companies a tax credit equal to a quarter of a film’s production cost, a quarter of its payroll cost and an exemption from sales tax.
“Last year was a busy year,” he said. “This year is supposed to be a real busy year.”
But next year might not be. Boles says if Gov. Charlie Baker eliminates the state’s film tax credit as planned, his business would dry up. He says his company has invested $4 million in equipment to rent to the industry.
“I know, like, one of the governor’s opinions is, he feels like most of the money goes out of the state,” Boles said. “But I don’t think he realizes how many people are doing what I’m doing as far as investing money to have equipment here available that’s local.”
Massachusetts has been home to a talking teddy bear and plenty of gangsters on the big screen in recent years. The producers who have shot those movies here have taken advantage of a significant state tax break. Now Baker wants to put an end to that incentive, igniting a debate on the value of paying to bring movie productions to Massachusetts.
Disclosure: The WGBH Educational Foundation benefits from the Massachusetts film tax credit.
Baker hasn’t just said he wants to eliminate the film tax credit. He’s made a point of saying that he wants to take that money and use it to double the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC to help low income workers.
“We made a pretty clear comment that if we had to choose between expanding the EITC for $400,000 low-income families in Massachusetts, or continuing to operate a film tax credit that two-thirds of the benefit goes to people who don’t live in Massachusetts, we’ll take the former over the latter,” he said.
“The governor, if nothing else, was smart politically to put them together and get us thinking,” said House Speaker Robert DeLeo, who has supported the film tax credit. DeLeo says he spoke a few years ago with the Chelsea Chamber of Commerce about its economic impact. “I heard from someone renting furniture. I heard from a paint store in Chelsea. I heard from a florist in Chelsea, a caterer. So, what I’m saying is there’s a lot more to that than may meet the eye in terms of the economic engine that it is for the Commonwealth.”
“When we have a high-tech startup, people are buying restaurant meals and going to the dry-cleaners just as well,” said Steve Poftak, executive director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard. “You know, it’s always been a little bit confusing to me, beyond the obvious star appeal, why we’ve chosen to focus so tightly on the film industry and to subsidize them at such a rate.”
That rate, he says, is way too generous for what the state is getting in return.
“If you’re talking about Massachusetts resident jobs created, we’re talking somewhere north of $100,000 in tax credits paid out per job created,” Poftak said.
Many in the industry dispute those numbers, which come from the state Department of Revenue. Chris O’Donnell, business manager of IATSE Local 481, a union representing technicians and craftspeople on TV and film sets, says in the last seven years, film and TV productions have bought goods and services from more than 2,000 Massachusetts businesses in over 225 cities and towns throughout the state.
“In 2012 alone, the tax credit was responsible for creating 1,900 good-paying jobs that had an average salary of around $64,000 a year, and almost 70 percent of those went to Massachusetts residents.”
One of those residents is Jeff Eads, who works as a set lighting technician.
“I worked on 'The Departed,' 'The Town,' 'RIPD,' 'Ted’ 1, 'Ted 2,'” he said.
Working on those movies, he says, has allowed him to build a good life for his family, which includes two-year-old twins.
“We live in this state, and we support the economy,” he said. “I bought two cars in the last two years, I just bought a house. I can list dozens and hundreds of people that have bought houses that have property and cars, who live in Massachusetts as working-class people.”
Baker and some economists are basically saying there aren’t enough examples like Eads to make the film tax credit worth it. They say investing that money in the Earned Income Tax Credit would impact more people.
That’s all good, unless it’s your job on the line, like Lisa Nagid, who’s worked with movie props for 22 years.
“I love Massachusetts,” Nagid said. “I love my community in Roxbury. I can’t imagine leaving there.”
But if the tax credit goes away, she says she might have to move to New York or Los Angeles to find work.
“It would mean starting all over,” she said. “And that is very scary to me.”
It’s now up to the Massachusetts legislature to decide if they agree with Baker that it’s time to roll the closing credits on bay state’s film tax credit.
