251–260 of 957 posts
Anyone know what the situation in Europe is?
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While this does convey the idea, the premise is also biased. > even though it has a total of $100K in the bank after the actual expenses were paid. People running a business can perfectly understand the concept of liquidity. And yes, just because you transform money to something else, then it doesn't mean that you should not be taxed on it. The extreme example is a company that buys gold on the last trading day of th…
I think you are conflating "software engineers" with "software". A business that pays a software engineer doesn't automatically receive working software in return, especially not in the first year. It doesn't seem fair to assume that paying a dev $200k means that the business received an asset (some code) worth $200k in return, and thus can be taxed on it as if it were an asset producing $200k in profits a year.
Btw,this is how it is done in many construction projects also. Like bridges, budings, etc.
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> provided that employer pays local taxes in those countries for those roles. This was phrased a bit confusingly, at least to me. Can you explain?
It’s a double taxation thing. If the employer is paying taxes abroad (as in, a net positive payment to that country’s tax collection agency), then we should absolutely give them the IRS break on labor here; if they’re not paying taxes abroad, then they’re taxed on said labor here. The idea is to reduce offshoring as a means of dodging tax liability for multinational firms. If they want the tax cut here, they gotta pa…
Ah I see. You mean if the effective tax rate for a worker in some country is 20% but the effective rate in the US would have been 30% they have to pay the difference in the US? Interesting idea but if the salaries overseas are much lower, how much revenue will that extra 10% raise anyway? More likely the worker would fall into a lower US tax bracket.
I wouldn't mind seeing something like that for corporate profits actually.
I’m all for reverting that part of the tax code, but only on the condition that it’s inapplicable to H-1B visa or foreign worker salaries/payments, provided that employer pays local taxes in those countries for those roles. Keep good paying jobs in the USA. If we need immigrant labor, give them Green Cards instead of precarity.
The whole point is leverage/precarity.
Can someone steelman the positives for me? I don't see how it's anything but pure regulatory capture favoring established tech firms. A small company ramping up revenue simply can't handle this amortization while a large, established company can. That being said, I do think there's a little sloppiness in what is categorized as "R&D" in the software development. Is code maintenance R&D? Bug fixes? Performance improvem…
Doesn't this kind of make sense if software is an asset? If your company purchases a seat of Oracle or Solidworks or Windows 11 or whatever. I don't think you can expense that all at one time, you have to amortize over the useful life of the software, just like if it was a physical printing press or a backhoe. Similar if you were making a software program for sale or for use internally, there is the upfront costs ass…
Like you said, this is a pretty weird characterization of software. I guess it would make sense to lawmakers who have no idea how it works. Combine that with the fact the lobbyists pushing this are 99% representing big tech and you start to get a picture of how this happens.
Warning- brain dump not directly related to topic, read at your own risk. Lol @ software never wearing out. I wonder how that works with something like Microsoft windows licenses(as opposed to something like 365 which has new "features" every year)? I'm actually asking, how do you amortize an "asset" that you are admitting only lasts a year? I know SaaS on consumer side is categorized as opex.
Does this capital-asset view of software have any effect on the attractiveness of SaaS going forward? I know we were talking about the development side of things not the consumption side, but it seems like this capital/asset perspective conflicts with the reality of how software is often sold. SaaS is partially justified as the cost of 'maintaining' the software (in addition to support and new features). The fact that maintenance is required belies the perspective that it's a capital asset. Coming full circle, this must require the vendor/developer demarcate programmer effort between feature vs. maintenance & support. If anyone has a sythensis of all of this or reference it would be appreciated
It figures out who your reps are and sends them a pre-filled note based on what matters to you (you can edit/customize it before it sends). Includes a call script too if you're up for calling...
https://secure.legisletter.org/campaign/cmbpf5js80000l70d5fn...
A lot of people don't know what this Section 174 is about, so here's a brief explainer. Normally, when you have expenses, you deduct them off your revenue to find your taxable profit. If you have $1 million in sales, and $900k in costs, you have $100k in profit, and the government taxes you on that profit. Section 174 says you can't do this for software engineers. If you pay a software engineer, that's not "really" a…
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The whole point is leverage/precarity.
I make said argument fully aware of the point of such schemes. It’s why I suggested, “You know, this is a good opportunity to rebalance the scales somewhat by utilizing a shared goal to extract reasonable concessions.”
The math has only shifted even more favorably for extracting even more unreasonable concessions too.
Or do you think there is a sudden lack of Indian H1B applicants? Or that tech workers suddenly have more political power than they previously did?
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That's not really the issue (and I say this as a socialist). The issue is that it's a weak and very leaky definition that attempts to redefine anyone that touches "software development" away from being taxed like employees into being taxed like machines that produce assets at the same value as their cost of operating. This punishes small businesses and new businesses more than any large org because it massively incre…
> it massively increases that depends entirely on how much the business is taxed. every $1 deducted from taxable income is NOT $1 saved in that business' tax payment. It's much more like $0.10-$0.30 saved in taxes.
The only businesses this hurts are small or young businesses that have yet to develop an established product and reliably revenue stream.
For them in the best case scenario they make so little that they can't even deduct but otherwise this means taxes being paid pulling away from the runway that a young business has before it builds up a stable income stream.