The tax break game

There is no compelling justification for the commonwealth’s $100-million-a-year subsidy for the film industry, much of which merely underwrites the salaries of rich Hollywood actors. “All the evidence shows that this is a very costly tax credit with minimal economic impact,’’ Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, testified in March. The few hundred new, mostly short-term, jobs attributable to the film subsidy in 2009,