If Lara Croft Don't Get Some Shelter, Oh Yeah, She's Gonna Fade Away

I don't remember my old film prof Tino Balio ever talking about how Hollywood studios use German tax shelters to finance big-budget action flicks. But according to Edward Jay Epstein, they do:

As paradoxical and absurd as it sounds, it's cheaper for a Hollywood studio to make a big-budget action movie than to make a shoestring art film like Sideways.

Reading the article gave me a certain sense of deja vu. German tax shelters...German tax shelters...why do they sound familiar? Then it hit me. Frontline talked about them in an episode on U.S corporations paying (gasp!) less than their fair share.