NYTimes.com: WITH tax day looming, you can practically hear the cries of creative professionals across the country. That’s because the tax code hits many right where it hurts, by penalizing them for the distinctive way they make money.
The biggest offender is still the alternative minimum tax, despite the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which brought long-overdue reform. Two provisions of the A.M.T. hit a disproportionate number of actors, screenwriters and directors: In calculating it, taxpayers can’t deduct employee business expenses, nor can they deduct state, local and property taxes.
1 comment:
This is another example of the U.S. government's refusal to support artists and thus the wellbeing of the curators of our cultural expression. This refusal is constant. It begins with the devaluing of arts programs in public schools by taking the hatchet to arts program's funding first. This trend is then continued in the lack of artist sensitive tax codes. Finally, this cultural devaluing of the arts, and specifically theatre, is illustrated in the solely capitalist theatre system that exists. Theaters receive no government support (unlike theaters in Russia--where theatre is culturally more widely accessible, implemented and recognized as valuable) and are thus thrown to the wolves--aka the capitalist competition which, does not necessarily, support creative, cutting edge, ACCESSIBLE theatre. Though I do recognize that government funded theatre must be vulnerable to censorship (outright or not), some sort of support could elevate theatre from a pursuit/consumption of the few and wealthy.
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