“Ladies and gentlemen, if you tax them, they will leave,” New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told state lawmakers last year in support of his proposed tax cuts. Many elected officials, journalists, and commentators state as a truism that residents — especially wealthy ones — regularly flee from higher-tax states to lower-tax ones. Only it’s not true, as our major new report explains.

Despite large budget shortfalls, states like Florida, Michigan, and New Jersey are considering new business tax cuts in the hope that this will generate job growth. This strategy isn’t likely to work, for several reasons:

The powerful Motion Picture Association of America came out with six-guns blazing last week, claiming that our new report on state tax subsidies for film and TV productions is “politically motivated” and “slipshod” and that the Center itself is “biased” and “prejudiced.” But when you get past all the name-calling, MPAA’s press release doesn’t address — let alone disprove — our main argument, which is that these subsidies aren’t a cost-effective way for states to generate jobs and income.