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Destroying it should be legal. Writing that off as a loss should be considered fraud, especially when there's an offer for it.
by cnees 3y ago
Destroying it should be legal. Writing that off as a loss should be considered fraud, especially when there's an offer for it.
- gruez 3y ago>Writing that off as a loss should be considered fraud, especially when there's an offer for it. From wikipedia: >In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Where's the deception here?
- dymk 3y agoIt's defrauding the taxpayer
- gruez 3y ago"fraud" doesn't mean "losing money in a manner I don't like", so I ask again: where's the deception here?
- dymk 3y agoThat they actually incurred the losses they claim to have incurred, so they get a tax break. The taxpayer is defrauded. They would rather delete the movie to claim the tax break than sell it to another studio offering more than the tax break. If you think they actually lost that amount of money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
- gruez 3y ago> That they actually incurred the losses they claim to have incurred, so they get a tax break. The taxpayer is defrauded. Did they not incur such losses? Did they claim to delete the movie but actually kept a backup? Granted, the loss is self-inflicted, but that's not a relevant factor in the tax code.
- ok_dad 3y agoIf I burn down my house and claim insurance or tax losses, they’ll laugh and send me to jail. Explain how a corporation doing the effectively the same thing should get a write off. It’s a sham.
- gruez 3y agoIn your scenario the illegal parts would be: 1. claiming insurance on it. AFAIK this isn't applicable in the case of the movie 2. endangering other houses by doing it in a non-approved way Other than that setting houses that you own on fire isn't illegal.
- ok_dad 3y agoAnd why should a studio be allowed to claim a movie they destroyed on taxes again? I’m not interested in the answer, “it’s legal,” because a lot of things are legal that should be illegal and vice versa, I’m looking for your moral reasoning here as to why this shouldn’t be made illegal.
- gruez 3y ago>I’m looking for your moral reasoning here as to why this shouldn’t be made illegal. If you read the thread more carefully, you'll see I never made such a claim. The only claim I made is that it's not fraud. I thought this was pretty clear with my earlier comment: > "fraud" doesn't mean "losing money in a manner I don't like", so I ask again: where's the deception here?
- ok_dad 3y agoThe deception is that normal people won’t expect you can destroy your own property and claim insurance without being put in the clink.
- shadowgovt 3y agoIt's not the same because the tax code is, even more than the rest of the law, really just made up. It just tells you when you have to pay and when you don't have to pay. If they didn't explicitly write in that you're not allowed to burn a movie, then burning a movie gets you a tax break. End of.
- AlbertCory 3y agothe deception is assigning a zero value to the movie, when it's not zero.
- gruez 3y agoIt is zero when the hard drive holding the only copy is degaussed.
- AlbertCory 3y agono, if you had an offer for $30M, then that was the value.
- gruez 3y agoAnd the value went to $0 after destroying it. I don't see what's the issue is here.
- AlbertCory 3y agoIf you can't understand accounting, maybe an introductory course would help.
- gruez 3y agoWhatever "introductory course" you took must be pretty bad, because even the elective I took in college taught that valuations on the same asset can go up and down.
- AlbertCory 3y agoapparently they didn't teach about "fair market value" then.
- smileybarry 3y agoThe buyer is not buying the hard drive, they're buying the asset it holds. If you destroy the only copy, you make it unobtainable but the value of that intellectual property is arguably still $30m. (If said offer was $30m, in this case) For that reason: if the studio destroyed all known copies of the movie, write it off, and then an unknown copy gets leaked by someone who worked on it -- the studio will still sue for damages >$0 and claim in court that any piracy downloads are potential viewings, ergo stolen profit.
- glitchc 3y agoHow so if funded by private capital?
- ClassyJacket 3y agoThat they lost money on the film.
- gruez 3y agoIf you spent a bunch of time and resources making a movie, and then decide to shred it, did you not lose money?
- exe34 3y agoIf I burn down my house, I lose money. Should I be able to claim insurance on that?
- gruez 3y agoIf your insurance policy covers that (unlikely because of this exact situation), then sure.
- aniforprez 3y agoNo insurance company in the world will pay out insurance if you commit arson against your own house because that's stupid. Same thing should apply here. Destroying a film to get a tax break at the very least should incur penalties
- MrNeon 3y agoThe penalty is that they lose money at the end of the day. It is not a sustainable business practice.