this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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My assumption is the original one done for a Hobbit promo was probably done at a big discount since it's basically advertising.
Not sure about this one. Tax writeoffs don't let you deduct any more than actual expenses, so you unlikely they gain financially from tax reasons. Might be the replacements are more overt about advertising for Wētā workshops, or are smaller. Or perhaps Wētā are struggling for work at the moment and have done a deal to keep staff busy.
I presume council spending is public or gets made public at some point?
Oh, they couldn't claim on the labour involved in producing a gift? There goes my whole straw man...
To be fair, the advertising is unreal but I struggle to see how it might connect to work coming in. Increasing visitors to the Wētā cave tours is a different matter, I guess.
I still love they did it, but surely the fixture has a bunch of regular costs (the mounts and supporting infrastructure, etc). It does make the terminal more interesting, which is much appreciated. I still get hung up on the cost/benefit analysis
Sure they could claim the labour, but they also have to pay for that labour. If they were going to make a 100k profit, they might have to pay 30k in tax, pocket 70k. But if they spent 100k on labour, they then make a $0 profit and pay no tax. But they pocket nothing.
For a company that can't manipulate governments, paying tax is a good thing. It means you made a profit.
For work coming in, imagine they have 50 salaried staff. Costs them X per year. US economy tanks and now they have no work. They could make these staff redundant, pay them a bunch of redundancy money. Or they could keep them on the books and pay them to do nothing. Or a third option, take on work even though they are only covering say 80% of what it costs, under the assumption that doing this for a year is cheaper than paying redundancy.
Hard to say what the actual argument was for spending the money without knowing the discussion around the decision.
I've absolutely seen companies take on work at break even, or even at a loss, just to keep staff employed and the business ticking over through a quiet patch.
Can you imagine how hard it must be to hire someone with the skills those Wētā Workshop folk have? I expect there's a really good reason to tide over a downturn with some work to keep the team busy if you have hope over the horizon.
Oh, absolutely. There would be people there with decades of experience in a very niche field, and if you let them go, you'll likely never get them back.