This blog was first published by Bloomberg Tax
With hundreds of beaches and year-round summer weather, Puerto Rico seemed the perfect setting for a tropical-themed Corona beer ad—all the more, with the commonwealth contributing almost $800,000 in taxpayer subsidies to bring it to life.
Bitten LLC, a local media production consulting firm, told the commonwealth’s film commission that the production would generate 46 local jobs and book 120 hotel nights.
The tax credit application was part of a Corona brand campaign, “La Vida Más Fina,” created in 2020 by the ad agency MullenLowe. But the work in Puerto Rico focused primarily on capturing landscapes and background plates. Filming the stars—rappers Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rico native, and Snoop Dogg—occurred in a studio in Los Angeles, and the video component for television was directed over Zoom, according to people who worked on the campaign.
Film tax credit programs, offered in 38 states and Puerto Rico, were designed to attract movie and television series productions to places producers might not otherwise consider. States have raced to top each other as officials tout the credits as vehicles to create jobs and support independent filmmakers.
But hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies have been provided to create advertisements for some of the world’s biggest consumer product companies, including McDonald’s Corp., Kellanova (previously Kellogg Co.), and AbbVie Inc., according to data obtained by Bloomberg Tax through public records requests. In Georgia, which claims to offer the most film tax incentives, the number of awards for commercials rose 53% from fiscal 2022 to fiscal 2023, while approvals for television and movies fell 5%…