In addition to winning a second consecutive Super Bowl, dating Taylor Swift, and receiving rave reviews as a Saturday night live host, Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs, adds “Hollywood producer” to his resume. Unfortunately, American taxpayers will help him with this.
Kelce is an executive producer of My dead friend Zoe, a dark comedy he helped finance, which will premiere in March at South by Southwest. But Variety reports that the film, produced for less than $10 million, will also benefit from federal tax credits aimed at incentivizing the production of clean, renewable energy.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the piece of legislation signed by President Joe Biden, spent billions of dollars in tax credits to encourage the development and adoption of clean energy technologies.
Under the provisions of the law, green energy tax credits are “transferable,” allowing a recipient with little or no federal income tax liability to “pass through” the credit to someone else. “Essentially, this allows owners and developers of renewable projects to sell tax credits for cash and makes it easier to finance clean energy projects,” writes Rachel Chang of the Center for American Progress.
My dead friend Zoe is a production of Radiant Media Studios, whose co-founder Mike Field is an investor in green energy projects. Second VarietyField sold green energy tax credits to raise money for the film.
“Hollywood is risky, right? On a scale of one to 10, Hollywood is a 9.5,” said Radiant co-founder Ray Maiello Variety. “These federal tax credits reduce the risk to about five.”
The outlet notes this while My dead friend Zoe will be the first film to take advantage of a credit transfer, the concept of selling green tax credits is already common in the business world: a study published in January found that in the first half of 2023, green energy companies they have sold between $7 billion and $9 billion in green tax credits to other companies.
“Biden saw that people can’t plan what their tax liabilities will be,” Maiello added. “People don’t want to take risks. And so he’s really opened things up with these federal tax credits and we’re combining them with Hollywood.”
But risk is an intrinsic part of the process, whether starting a business or making a film. What Biden actually did was dump some of that risk on the American taxpayer, who will now be trapped for a portion of the movie along with his financiers.