OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D • Hacker News Board

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#21

Post by lesuorac » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 1:47 AM UTC

earth2mars wrote: post #20

tomrod wrote: post #14

If correct, this is a good thing on a generally bad, overstuffed bill. Immediate expensing never should have been changed in the first place, and it was always weird seeing people twist themselves in knots defending it.

This. TCJA removed it and OBBBA restored it. What am I missing here

It lets you claim BBB doesn't increase the budget by as much as it'll ultimately do.

By having a bunch of random provision in BBB that generate revenue it lowers it's impact on the defect and then you can repeal them later on after passing BBB.

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#22

Post by umeshunni » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 1:48 AM UTC

The 2nd most annoying thing about section 174 was all the time you had to spend classifying each engineer's time spent as R&D or 'internal software'. At my last company, every year, me and my engineering lead counterparts would spent almost a day reviewing each engineer's JIRA tickets to reconstruct how much of their time was spent on R&D vs internal software.

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#23

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 1:48 AM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #19

tomrod wrote: post #14

If correct, this is a good thing on a generally bad, overstuffed bill. Immediate expensing never should have been changed in the first place, and it was always weird seeing people twist themselves in knots defending it.

It’s an overstuffed bill because nobody will compromise on anything so the only way to pass a bill that has anything even remotely controversial to either party is one reconciliation bill a year.

> It’s an overstuffed bill because nobody will compromise on anything so the only way to pass a bill that has anything even remotely controversial to either party is one reconciliation bill a year.

No, and lots of controversial bills have passed other than as reconciliation bills, and especially so during trifectas where they "controversial" within the minority party but broadly supported by the majority; reconciliation is necessary to pass something that strains unity in the majority party and is uniformly opposed by (not "controversial to") the minority party, perhaps.

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#24

Post by lesuorac » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 1:49 AM UTC

beebmam wrote: post #6

macinjosh wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome, this literally could not be better for American tech workers.

There's also H-1B (and other worker visa) restrictions/costs imposed. Overall, quite good for the American tech worker

Meh.

If you hire H-1B you should be required to pay a fee greater than it costs to educate an equivalent American. Otherwise you're always in the situation where you have to hire foreigners because no Americans are trained. (or in reality you hire foreigners because they're cheaper for the same role which this no longer makes it the case)

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#25

Post by rhinoceraptor » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 1:54 AM UTC

earth2mars wrote: post #20

tomrod wrote: post #14

If correct, this is a good thing on a generally bad, overstuffed bill. Immediate expensing never should have been changed in the first place, and it was always weird seeing people twist themselves in knots defending it.

This. TCJA removed it and OBBBA restored it. What am I missing here

Classic 45-47 maneuver, first create a problem. Then solve it, often poorly and incompletely. Finally, claim victory, another 300 IQ 5D chess move in the books.

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#26

Post by johncole » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 1:59 AM UTC

I think we will see this lead to a boost in software developer employment.

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#27

Post by dhosek » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 2:00 AM UTC

[flagged]

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#28

Post by earth2mars » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 2:02 AM UTC

macinjosh wrote: post #4

tareqak wrote: post #2

> Foreign R&D must still be amortized over 15 years

Awesome, this literally could not be better for American tech workers.

Yes, but why the domestic r&d must be amortized only within 5 years? One way it is harder for finance to deduct all the expense within 1 year or they have to amortize only within 5 years. In case of foreign r&d expenses though they cannot detect in the year they incur but they have 15 years amortize. So I don't get the benefit of. In fact if they haven't touched this it could have been much better. In tcja they made it worse. And they fix it partially by making it deductible within the year they incur for domestic r&d. But the amortization still kills it.

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#29

Post by cheriot » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 2:03 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #23

xp84 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an overstuffed bill because nobody will compromise on anything so the only way to pass a bill that has anything even remotely controversial to either party is one reconciliation bill a year.

> It’s an overstuffed bill because nobody will compromise on anything so the only way to pass a bill that has anything even remotely controversial to either party is one reconciliation bill a year. No, and lots of controversial bills have passed other than as reconciliation bills, and especially so during trifectas where they "controversial" within the minority party but broadly supported by the majority; reconciliat…

In the last 10 years, have there been more than a handful of bills that got 60 votes in the senate?

I wouldn't like what the current congress would do without the filibuster, but at this point a paralyzed system might be worse.

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#30

Post by supriyo-biswas » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 2:07 AM UTC

umeshunni wrote: post #22

The 2nd most annoying thing about section 174 was all the time you had to spend classifying each engineer's time spent as R&D or 'internal software'. At my last company, every year, me and my engineering lead counterparts would spent almost a day reviewing each engineer's JIRA tickets to reconstruct how much of their time was spent on R&D vs internal software.

At a previous employer, they used to have this process where they would classify each project as being in active development or being in maintenance, and even the tiniest bit of development work required the "initiation" of a "project" with budget planning and approvals.

At the time I dismissed it as a bureaucratic process invented by the company; after all, they had no dearth of leaders adding bureaucracy to systems for the purpose of empire-building and, to a lesser extent, asserting self-importance. However, upon reading about Section 174, it made some sense, and I wonder whether they might just get around to removing these processes.