Made in the USA

The LA Times files a report on the increasing domestic competition for luring location production to states around the Union. The uberobvious thesis is summarized by producer Joel Silver: "It all comes down to costs."

Primarily telling the story of how chap the Big Easy has become, the incentives detailed in the story are not for Louisiana, but Illinois, and Utah, with New York mentioned as another haven (previous detail on NY subsidies). In Illinois, "the incentives offer a tax credit of 25% for wages paid to state residents working on Illinois sets, with an additional 10% for producers hiring from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods." And in Utah, there are "tax rebates of up to 20% on local spending, dollar-for-dollar salary matches for job training and promotion, and no-interest loans of as much as $15 million a production."

The bottom line analysis "for a hypothetical production that would cost $19.24 million to produce in Los Angeles":

	Total production costs	State incentives	Total adjusted costs
Utah	$19,077,649	$500,000	$18,577,649
Illinois	19,394,120	884,008	18,510,112
Louisiana	19,077,649	1,041,997	18,035,652
New Mexico	19,099,212	1,301,000	17,798,212
Florida	19,386,400	2,000,000	17,386,400