Not true, Hollywood can shift profits from one film to another, but not hide them in such a way that no-one of them break even. You could have checked what the major studios are making (it was about $6bn net in 2025).
This is what audits are for, and in any functioning country (indeed even a half-functioning one like the US) the internal revenue department makes it very difficult to hide profits at a large scale. There’s an easy way to sniff check this claim: if it were possible to hide profits so thoroughly, why does any company at all pay any corporation tax at all?
What Hollywood does is shuffle its real costs around so that films which would have to pay the largest royalties appear to make no money. They can also shuffle some things around so that subsidiaries operating in high tax countries appear to make a loss. Supermarkets selling physical goods in physical shops can’t do this.
There’s also no reason to think that companies have got better at hiding profits over the last few years, even if you think their profits are wrong.
Not true, Hollywood can shift profits from one film to another, but not hide them in such a way that no-one of them break even. You could have checked what the major studios are making (it was about $6bn net in 2025).
This is what audits are for, and in any functioning country (indeed even a half-functioning one like the US) the internal revenue department makes it very difficult to hide profits at a large scale. There’s an easy way to sniff check this claim: if it were possible to hide profits so thoroughly, why does any company at all pay any corporation tax at all?
What Hollywood does is shuffle its real costs around so that films which would have to pay the largest royalties appear to make no money. They can also shuffle some things around so that subsidiaries operating in high tax countries appear to make a loss. Supermarkets selling physical goods in physical shops can’t do this.
There’s also no reason to think that companies have got better at hiding profits over the last few years, even if you think their profits are wrong.