Inario

Le financement allemand du cinéma américain

Peu de domaines sont aussi compliqués que le financement des long-métrages. La plupart du temps, cette complexité est liée à la maximisation des subventions et du levier fiscal qui augmentent les retours du producteurs sur les films qui réussissent.

En général cependant, toutes ces subventions et contreparties ont un prix : filmer dans un certain pays, dans certaines conditions, … Mais pas toujours, comme le montre le système des réductions d’impôt allemandes !

In 2003, German tax shelters, with the aid of German corporate shells and the happy cooperation of American studios, invested some $3 billion in the total fiction that they were owners, producers, and profit-sharers in Hollywood movies.

(…)

Consider the case of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. A Munich-based tax-shelter fund, Hannover Leasing, had a corporate shell pay $150 million to New Line Cinemas for the movie’s copyright, which it simultaneously leased back to a New Line affiliate. It also entered into agreements for New Line to produce and distribute the movie. At the end of filming, New Line Cinemas paid the German company the agreed-upon minimum advance (which approximately equaled the interest on the initial investment) to honor the pretense that the Germans had participated in the profits. For engaging in these strictly paper transactions, New Line “earned” $16 million, a tidy “money-for-nothing” sum.

via germanshelter.