I have a message for Nevada: Beware. As a state representative in the Georgia General Assembly, I’m writing to warn you as you consider expanding your state’s film tax credit in a special legislative session. In the rush to stimulate your economy and create jobs, do not give a handout to big corporations that will leave you high and dry when they’re done extracting value from you. 

That’s what’s happened in Georgia — and it will almost certainly happen to you.

As a Democrat, I have watched with fascination as my state, Republican-led since the early aughts, has so eagerly embraced film tax credits. Never mind that “Hollywood liberals” is a phrase often thrown around here. Despite pushback, these tax credits keep getting extended — including this year, with the passage of HB129.

I suppose none of this should surprise me. I know, in the end, money talks the loudest — even more than values, including partisan values. And Georgia wanted to boost its economy. The goal itself is laudable. But Georgia has become utterly fixated on one way to meet that goal: The film tax credit is now our largest corporate tax incentive, expanding over time to compete with 38 other states that have enacted their own credits. And to think it all started with Louisiana’s film tax credit program in 2002, which apparently led to Georgia officials seething when Ray, the 2004 Oscar-winning biopic about Georgia native Ray Charles, filmed in New Orleans. 

Georgia implemented its first tax credit the next year. Since then, the state has chosen to ignore the fact that, while we should absolutely support local jobs and the creative arts, businesses that benefit from these tax credits don’t care so much about local economies and arts communities as they do about making money. Proponents of the measure have included production companies and studio owners, hungry to increase tax benefits and profits. Opponents have been a mix of economists, fiscal watchdogs, and state auditors who have serious questions about the return on investment for Georgia.

After all, it’s not as if the beneficiaries of these tax credits are small or even medium-sized studios; instead they’re major Hollywood corporations with the primary goal of maximizing profit for executives and shareholders. You might say there’s nothing wrong with that, either — but, even so, you’ve got to face the reality that, as soon as these businesses decide they’re not making enough money from you, they will make the unilateral decision to skedaddle.

Which doesn’t mean these credits didn’t benefit Georgia. They absolutely did. But at what price? The choice to give away these tax credits necessarily meant that the government picked winners and losers. With $887 million given to the industry in 2024 and an additional $1 billion in incentives projected in 2025, what other industries and infrastructure — teachers, roads, state workers — could we have funded instead? 

Georgia is infamously one of a handful of states that have not fully expanded Medicaid, instead instituting an ostensibly cheaper Medicaid waiver program, Pathways, with a first-of-its-kind work requirement (a requirement that presaged the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”). The yearly estimate for full Medicaid expansion in Georgia: $239 million.

Even now, more pressing budget issues are on the horizon, given the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” For example, for the first time, Georgia will end up paying for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to the tune of $162 million annually. Additionally, 721,000 Georgians are projected to lose health care coverage due to federal cuts to Medicaid. 

Equally, if not more importantly, even as these tax credits created jobs in Georgia, where are those jobs now? In 2025, we extended these credits all the way to 2031 — yet Disney, which owns Marvel, still left for overseas in search of cheaper labor, leaving tens of thousands of Georgians unemployed.

The result? Big studios were the winners, and everyday Georgians were the losers, including people in our film and arts industries. The industry of “Hollywood liberals" was no better than any other big corporation that goes from state to state, extracting resources, providing some benefit, sure, but then casting aside thousands of people with no repercussions when those people no longer served them.

The writing has long been on the wall: Remember that Sony actively blamed the writer’s strike on unions. And they point to living (union) wages as the reason they are leaving the U.S. But we’ve repeatedly chosen to ignore it, because they promise to do things differently each time. Fool us twice, shame on us.

Georgia committed to these credits long before 2025 — a year that has now seen tariffs, federal defunding of many nonprofits and higher education institutions, social service cuts and corporate tax breaks. In the face of all of that, would Georgia make the same choice now?

I’d argue no. We’re going to have to make some tough budget choices this coming year, and we can’t afford these kinds of tax breaks. More than 650,000 Georgians are losing Medicare, and 729,000 of them will have food taken off the table due to federal cuts to SNAP. Adding insult to injury, we have no safety net to save us from the $11.1 billion the state owes in corporate subsidies. But the point is moot, because that ship has sailed in Georgia (and that ship is now in Europe, where apparently Marvel has chosen to film).

Now it’s your turn, Nevada. Your government will choose winners and losers with film tax credits — and most Nevadans will be losers. None of this is to say Nevada doesn’t need to boost its economy or shouldn’t support the arts. But why couldn’t that boost come in the form of long-term investments in infrastructure — including the arts — instead of what amounts to a short-term fix that benefits big business?

The choice is yours. Let our experience in Georgia be a cautionary tale — and choose wisely.

Elected in 2020, Georgia Rep. Marvin Lim represents the citizens of House District 98, which includes portions of Gwinnett County. Rep. Lim originally immigrated to Georgia from the Philippines at the age of 7. As a Fulbright Scholar and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Lim has also been a frequent writer on law, religion and ethics.