From the 2026 budget audit
Who decided every worker should subsidise the film industry?
A 63 milliárd Ft supplement routes general tax revenue to sector-specific film production — a discretionary industrial transfer with no rights-protection function.
Roughly 15,750 Ft per taxpayer per year — 63 milliárd Ft total, allocated to one industry's tax-rebate pipeline while every other sector competes on unsubsidised terms.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: domestically-shot productions and the jobs on their sets. The unseen: 63 milliárd Ft drawn from wage-earners across every other sector, and the firms in those industries that did not receive a comparable subsidy and competed without one.
Objection
"But film production creates jobs and tourism revenue — the rebate effectively pays for itself through the economic activity it generates."
Answer
Every subsidised industry can point to the visible activity its subsidy supports; the diffuse cost — higher taxes on work in every other sector — stays invisible. The film industry was not chosen because it generates more value than alternatives; it was chosen. The line can be eliminated in one budget cycle; accrued rebate claims already made are honoured, no new commitments are written.
Share if you think industrial subsidies should come from voluntary investment, not from every worker's taxes.
The analyst's verdict
Indirect film-industry support — supplementary financing under the Motion Picture Act
Rationale
This line funds the supplementary financing of the indirect (tax-rebate) film-support system. It is a sector subsidy: a transfer to film production financed by general taxation. There is no rights-protection function here, no constitutional precondition, and no reliance interest of the kind that protects an accrued entitlement — a film-support rebate is a discretionary industrial subsidy. The seen is a domestically-shot production and the jobs on its set; the unseen is the 63 milliárd Ft of tax that funded it, drawn from wage-earners across every sector, and the productions and firms in other industries that did not receive a comparable subsidy and competed on unsubsidised terms. The argument that the rebate "pays for itself" through induced activity is the candle-makers' argument: every subsidised industry can point to the visible activity its subsidy supports while the diffuse cost to everyone else stays invisible. The line can be eliminated in a single budget cycle; productions with rebate claims already accrued under existing law are honoured as a contractual matter, but no new commitments are made.
Transition mechanism
The line can be eliminated in a single budget cycle; productions with rebate claims already accrued under existing law are honoured as a contractual matter, but no new commitments are made.
Affected groups
Film production companies and their staff (who lose access to future rebates); wage-earners across all sectors (who funded the subsidy); firms in other industries that competed on unsubsidised terms.
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