Destroying a movie to claim the tax break is analogous to burning your house down for the insurance money or to claim a casualty loss. Yes, you really did lose your house. No, you are not entitled to claim it as a write-off.
That's fraud because the insurance policy specifically says it won't pay out if you intentionally set it on fire. If you actually did set it on fire, then claimed that you didn't then that's the deception.
>No, you are not entitled to claim it as a write-off.
Can you point to the relevant tax law that prevents this?
“ Nondeductible losses. A casualty loss isn’t deductible, even to the extent the loss doesn’t exceed your personal casualty gains, if the damage or destruction is caused by the following.
Accidentally breaking articles such as glassware or china under normal conditions.
A family pet (explained below).
A fire if you willfully set it, or pay someone else to set it.
A car accident if your willful negligence or willful act caused it. The same is true if the willful act or willful negligence of someone acting for you caused the accident.
Progressive deterioration (explained below). However, see Special Procedure for Damage From Corrosive Drywall, later.”
The linked document looks like it's for personal taxes, not corporate taxes. Business taxes is different from personal taxes in many ways, including how deductions are handled. For instance if you buy office 365 personally that can't be deducted, but if you bought it as a business it can.
Sure. Qualified business expenses are deductible. Personal expenses are not deductible, and neither are losses suffered because you willfully destroyed your own property. That is true for businesses as well as individuals.
Right, and the studio is deducting all the resources it spent making the movie. If you decide to invest in a bunch of money into developing a product, and then not commercialize it, all the r&d money that went into it is still deductible. It gets tricky when amortization and accruals are involved, but in the end it's approximately the same principle.
There is no law that specifically prevents it, just as there is no law the specifically prevents you from deducting, say, money that you pay to buy groceries. What there is is a very long list of things you can deduct, and grocery money, and losses that you suffer from willful destruction of your own property, are not on that list.
> What there is is a very long list of things you can deduct, and grocery money, and losses that you suffer from willful destruction of your own property, are not on that list.
Actually if you read the sibling comment[1], such list of "things you can't deduct" does exist, albeit it's seemingly for personal taxes.
That list is advisory. It is not part of the law. I can't point you to a law that says, "You cannot deduct destroyed movies" just as I cannot point you to a law that says, "You cannot deduct grocery expenses."
> analogous to burning your house down for the insurance money
It’s very different because insurance pays out to make whole. Taxes are just taxes.
It’s the equivalent of burning your house down and then writing off the depreciated value because it burned down. Totally legal. Because it’s worth less after burning it down. Assuming you burn it in a legal, controlled manner and not arson.
Every tax dollar you don't pay is a dollar someone else has to pay instead, or a dollar that gets added to the national debt. And burning your house down and writing off the depreciated value is absolutely not legal.
> Assuming you burn it in a legal, controlled manner and not arson.
Yes, well, that is a might big assumption. I doubt you could point me to a single instance of someone actually burning down their house in a "legal, controlled manner".
It ultimately boils down to details. If there really were a legitimate reason to destroy a film (or a house) rather than selling it to the highest bidder then you might have a case. But you'd be very hard-pressed to come up with a set of legitimate circumstances for either one.
>Every tax dollar you don't pay is a dollar someone else has to pay instead, or a dollar that gets added to the national debt. And burning your house down and writing off the depreciated value is absolutely not legal.
nobody is entitled tax revenue. Laws generally support taxes on income/profit, and arent just a bill.
It isn't illegal to work less and pay less taxes.
It is absolutely legal to knock down your house so you dont have to pay property or sales tax on it.
>It is absolutely legal to knock down your house so you dont have to pay property or sales tax on it.
Generally property taxes are on the land and its improvements (eg. houses), so burning down the house wouldn't relieve you of property tax obligations. Moreover, destroying the house would actually reduce your tax obligations, and AFAIK isn't illegal.
So you're saying that you can't demolish buildings on your own property (or at least not without rebuilding another of equal value), because that would lead to the city/county getting less taxes? That seems utterly absurd. What's next, not being able to paint the inside of your house puke yellow, which would also tank property values?
>Every tax dollar you don't pay is a dollar someone else has to pay instead, or a dollar that gets added to the national debt. And burning your house down and writing off the depreciated value is absolutely not legal.
nobody is entitled tax revenue. Laws generally support taxes on income/profit, and arent just a bill.
It isn't illegal to work less and pay less taxes.
It is absolutely legal to knock down your house so you dont have to pay property or mortgage tax on it.
>but that's not the same thing as claiming the resulting loss as a deduction on your income tax
which you can also do. If you knock down your house, then sell it, you will have a pretty heafty capital loss, which you can then use as a income deduction for up to 8 years, or until it runs out.
Yes, but you have to sell it, at which point it's a capital loss. And you can sell the movie and take a loss that way as well (assuming you actually sell it at a loss).
What you cannot do is delete the movie and then claim it as a capital loss -- because you haven't sold it.
If you really want to get technical about it, in the vast majority of legal jurisdictions it is not possible to sell a house in isolation. You sell the land that the house is sitting on, and the house just comes along for the ride as an "improvement". So whatever legal abstraction you could sell before you tore the house down you can also sell after.
Only in the case when they can't profitably dispose of that inventory any other way. So unsold books, for example, can be destroyed and deducted, but an unoccupied office building cannot.
