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Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

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Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#41

Post by karaterobot »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #9
dekhn wrote: post #3

I believe Amazon classifies all costs of software engineering under R&D.

That seems reasonable. The D does stand for Development.

For the concept of R&D to mean anything, the D has to imply development in the sense of translating the R part—research—into prototypes or new products. It can't just be classifying every web developer in the organization as part of the R&D department, even if they're a junior dev changing button labels on internal accounting software. Not saying that Amazon is using the term the way I'd like, just that if they aren't, my English degree is going to start smoking and vibrating.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#42

Post by notso411 »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #9
dekhn wrote: post #3

I believe Amazon classifies all costs of software engineering under R&D.

That seems reasonable. The D does stand for Development.

Research and Development ( R&D ) tax relief supports companies that work on innovative projects in science and technology. You may be able to claim Corporation Tax relief if your project meets the standard definition of R&D .

Not in the UK and most EU law is identical to UK.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#43

Post by nradov »

ChadMoran wrote: post #30
lnxg33k1 wrote: post #2

I suspect its just a tax break related policy, ive been doing the same shit at US companies (still in EU), and some European companies (in EU) and the US one were the only one asking me to file reports for hours classified as R&D, maybe european ones have no incentive to do that Id say, considering that, and considering that for these corps taxes are lava, i’d go to look at incentives on taxes about R&D filing

CapEx vs OpEx. CapEx can be written off.

All business expenses can be written off. The difference between capital and operating expenses is in whether they are written off in the current year or depreciated over multiple years.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#45

Post by analognoise »

everforward wrote: post #29
ozim wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you don’t want to give tax breaks for another todo app and another off the mill CRUD that nowadays can be generated by GPT or could be copied from a template and adjusted. Using a template and adjusting or generating with GPT already sounds more like operations. You want to give tax breaks for real research and development of new things.

The market seems like it would preclude that. If they're making "another todo app" with nothing novel then the market will reject it, they will have no income, and they never would have been taxed anyways. The thought of research tax breaks is that the market qualifies them as useful. Useless inventions make no money, and have no income to be taxed anyways.

Markets aren’t efficient like that though. In theory they’re supposed to be, but we’ve had wave after wave of “innovation” that’s the same shit with different paint.

Take a car, replace all the perfectly good knobs with touch screens you won’t be able to replace in 5 years. Innovation! Massive conglomerates control the internet and feed you expertly tuned rage engagement. Innovation! Smart home lights that stop working when the servers go offline. Innovation!

On and on. If the markets were rational and efficient NFTs wouldn’t have even started. Crypto wouldn’t be a thing. Printers that refuse to print black because you’re out of cyan wouldn’t exist.

Markets blow and aren’t really maximizing productive anything directly. Tangentially, occasionally, when they’re not causing cost savings that cause doors to blow off of planes to save money. Seems tenuous at best.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#46

Post by robertlagrant »

simonw wrote: post #25
simonw wrote: post #18

Does that Amazon number include the cost of physically purchasing and installing all of those AWS server farms? Building robotic warehouses? I get that they have high R&D costs but I'm still trying to get my head around how that money is being spent.

Looks like the numbers being described are here: https://ir.aboutamazon.com/news-release/news-release-details... This bit: Cost of Sales: 272,344 Fulfillment: 75,111 Technology and Content: 73,213 Sales and Marketing: 32,551 General and Administrative: 8,823 Other Operating Expense (Income), Net: 62 So Technology and Content is the $73bn number. I think Fulfillment covers warehouse and delivery costs. "Technology and…

Surely the $1bn on Rings of Power isn't "R&D"?

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#47

Post by whartung »

ozim wrote: post #14
ars wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operations should not be R&D, but everything else certainly is. Why wouldn't it be?

Because you don’t want to give tax breaks for another todo app and another off the mill CRUD that nowadays can be generated by GPT or could be copied from a template and adjusted. Using a template and adjusting or generating with GPT already sounds more like operations. You want to give tax breaks for real research and development of new things.

Why not? Development is development.

If I build a new assembly building for a new product, that roof is going to be mainstream, long lasting, cheap as I can get it, and billed to “development” because that’s exactly what it is.

You can say the same standing up a CD/CI infrastructure, writing unit tests, mundane documentation and validation processes. It’s all development, getting stuff into production and into the market.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#48

Post by FirmwareBurner »

dmvdoug wrote: post #22
pie420 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

best i can do is more intrusive ads

And the Jetsons promised me flying cars when I was a kid.:(

Elon promised us Model 3 robotaxis in 6 months 4 years ago.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#49

Post by robertlagrant »

testless wrote: post #20

I am really confused as to why this is considered as a tax break strategy. Operating costs directly lower earnings, where as R&D might have to be amortized over years - at least in certain european countries. Isnt this reinvesting in your business? Also spending (or donating) money lowers your taxes by lowering your earnings.

Reinvesting in your business is something you get to do post-corporation tax.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#50

Post by kderbyma »

taxes. the way that R&D is measured is very tied to the tax code in countries. If R&D is economically promoted (historically the USA has invested much more money into R&D than other nations per capita because other nations tend to favour tax credits as opposed to direct investment - which seems like it opens the door for foreign investment to control a large percentage early in a startups life in exchange for tax credits after investment has dropped into their borders)
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