But Tyler Perry’s fame and wealth have not tricked down to working-class and poor black people in his home city of Atlanta. Perry celebrated the 2019 opening of his production studio on a defunct Fort McPherson Army base — with soundstages named for wealthy black celebrities, including Winfrey and Goldberg — as a life-changing act of social justice for the surrounding community. “When I built my studio, I built it in a neighborhood that’s one of the poorest black neighborhoods in Atlanta, so that young black kids can see that a black man did that and they can do that, too. I was trying to help them cross,” Perry proclaimed during a BET Awards speech.
In fact, it’s been the other way around. Almost all of Atlanta’s residents have subsidized Tyler Perry’s personal wealth — which reportedly topped
$1 billion this year — in some way or another.
In 2015, Perry acquired the Fort McPherson land for the significantly discounted market price of $30 million, though it had been appraised for as much as $75 million. Some local Democrats called it a “
sweetheart deal” between Perry and his friend Kasim Reed, then the mayor of Atlanta. Critics said it seemed designed to help the mogul’s pocketbook rather than the poor black neighborhoods around it. “It felt like a trick. A dirty, dirty trick,”
said one local resident after the deal was announced.
Forbes now estimates that Tyler Perry Studios is worth $280 million, but because of a tax deal made with local officials, he’s had to pay no property taxes on it from 2015 through 2022. That’s money would otherwise largely go to Atlanta Public Schools, whose student body is disproportionately poor and black. In 2023, the Fulton County assessor calculated the studios’ value at only $74 million — about a quarter of
Forbes’s estimate — which means taxes are less than $1 million, which have yet to be paid.
Additionally Perry has taken advantage of the 30 percent
state tax credit given to film productions in Georgia. The share of tax money used to subsidize Hollywood productions cost Georgia voters an average of $330 per household last year. Perry earned plenty of glowing
national headlines earlier this year for his philanthropy in donating $750,000 to help low-income seniors in Atlanta as property taxes increased. Still, there was no mention of the layers upon layers of tax breaks he got in the first place.