Subsidy Sheet: The sexiest man alive gets $2.5 million in NYS tax breaks

Two weeks ago, the New York State budget added another $100 million to the Broadway tax credit, which will pay out $400 million in tax dollars to investors by 2028. Broadway Journal details how what began as a COVID-era rescue of an industry shut-down by health restrictions has morphed into a money train for big-budget, corporate productions.

The credit was heavily criticized for giving $3 million to Disney’s billion dollar smash hit The Lion King in 2023. Unfazed, New York State government is likely giving George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck production $2.5 million in taxpayer funds that could go to clean water, public transit, or anti-poverty programs. George Clooney has a net worth of $500 million.

The sexiest man alive isn’t the only beneficiary of the program – Othello, starring Denzel, will get $2 million, and Glengarry Glen Ross, starring Kieran Culkin, will receive $1.9 million. Wicked and The Book of Mormon – among the most profitable shows on Broadway – have also received multi-million dollar payouts.

Among the many infuriating takeaways about a program that gives tax dollars to the super-rich is the utterly cynical repayment provision, which sounds nice but amounts to a big nothing. Productions that make a 200% profit are required to return up to half of their state subsidy to the New York State Council on the Arts – but the Council says they’ve never received any payments, and few if any productions ever make such a profit. As our Tom Speaker put it to Broadway Journal, it’s almost as if the high bar was by design.

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More analyses of the proposed federal Opportunity Zone renewal have come out since the Trump budget bill dropped last week. At the Brookings Institution, the venerable David Wessel – author of OZ history Only the Rich Can Play – notes that the transparency provisions were actually in the original OZ bill, then got stripped out thanks to Congress’s Byrd Rule, which allows “non-budget” items to be removed during the reconciliation process. Wessel expects OZ transparency to be removed again.

At Opportunity Zones [dot] com, OZ enthusiast Jimmy Atkinson says the House bill will result in 22% fewer OZs.

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