Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

kbkg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 395 posts

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

#231

Post by throwaway2037 »

Tade0 wrote: post #188
BobbyJo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. Most of the planet is cheaper than the US, and has been for decades. That being the case, how are there so many knowledge workers here still?

Hailing from an outsourcing destination I think I need to state the obvious: there exist IT jobs outside the US. Americans have a... distinct work culture and companies - local and foreign - are not stupid, so nowadays they aim for the 50-75 percentile in terms of compensation. On top of that you absolutely need to be fluent in English, which disqualifies half the candidates right off the bat. All this combined makes…

    > Americans have a... distinct work culture
That is a mighty wide brush to paint your generalisation. Do Brazilians or South Africans or Sri Lankans also have "distinct work culture"? I assume yes. Not much being said there.

Another way to look at it: If your country was much richer than the US the model would be flipped. Do you think Americans would post a similar generalisation here? Yep. Not much being said.

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

#232

Post by huhkerrf »

Galanwe wrote: post #133
ttul wrote: post #84

Meanwhile, in Canada, not only can you expense R&D, but there is a cashable tax refund that will give you back about 60% of your developers’ salaries…

There is something similar in France, the Crédit Impôts Recherche (CIR), I remember it was around 50%. I've heard it's going to disappear though, there were abuses.

It's also capricious. I've been in companies doing legitimate r&d who would spend man months preparing for the CIR only to get it rejected, while they got it in previous years for much less interesting work.

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

#233

Post by tossandthrow »

munch117 wrote: post #221
tossandthrow wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, seems like this is an opaque tarrif. Other countries should use this when retaliating.

If I'm understanding this correctly then this is about a tax disincentive, making it more expensive for US companies to poach R&D talent from other countries. Not all countries will see that as a problem.

The current administration is making a huge fuss out of VAT in Europe.

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

#234

Post by ozgrakkurt »

klabb3 wrote: post #207
ozgrakkurt wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is delusional to think you get same quality work for 70% less price.

If you work at FAANG and relocate from NYC/SF to a smaller satellite office within the US, you can take a large pay cut. Unless things have changed in the last few years, companies usually pay location-based market rate. The lines are blurred with remote work - which market are you really a part of? But there is nothing magical that separates within the US from outside.

Top engineers move to best pay location. For example best engineers in europe etc. move to US or get similarly high salaries in Europe. And having more high talent people in a location creates a different culture.

There is ofc some difference but if you are taking averages you will have much better engineers in a company based in nyc vs berlin.

I’m not an expert but this has been very apparent in places I worked, US based companies just had a better work setup and everything moved faster and with higher quality.

As an example, just saying an engineer is quarter the price in Turkey so you can just outsource there is very foolish. It just doesn’t work that way, maybe in wet dreams of CEOs only.

Similar thing with LLMs, some people are salivating over how they won’t need developers but it just isn’t that way yet.

Seeing how hungry businesses are for outsourcing and hiring remote, and seeing how it isn’t really working that way should be concrete proof for this.

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

#235

Post by throwaway2037 »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #129
anovikov wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it means that indirectly, developers' salaries are not a taxable income in Canada if they are working on R&D? Meaning, they do pay taxes on their income, but their employer gets those taxes back, so if tax is 60%, the employer could pay 250% of what they'd pay otherwise, get 150% back, then the developer pays 150% of taxes, and gets 100%, so in effect the salary is tax-free. Is that what you meant to say? If so, i…

Canada's lack of startups is heavily cultural. We adopt new products less. We are far more risk averse about purchasing goods or services from startups, far more risk averse about funding them (founders often give personal guarantees to get the investment), value the equity startups offer at far less, etc. Government is far more fussy about accountability with that refundable R&D money, so lots of time is spent filli…

The cultural bit is underrated. Tobias Lütke from Germany is the co-founder and CEO of Shopify has written about this issue of Canadian business culture extensively. Also, the ecosystem of VCs in the US are unmatched globally. And, the internal market in US is f'ing huge.

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

#236

Post by andrepd »

benreesman wrote: post #111
agwa wrote: post #42

As a small software business owner, I have to agree with Michele Hansen (who spent 2 years advocating on behalf of small software businesses for this very change): "we’re finally going to get Section 174 relief, and I couldn’t be angrier" https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mjwhansen_it-looks-like-were-...

Yeah. This is a tough one. Its a really bad bill that happens to also be the best thing that could happen in the economic life of most any programmer. This is going to make a lot of people's lives a lot worse and I'm against it even though it's an absurd windfall for me and people like me.

Yeah. Not gonna lie it's a bit obscene watching people in this thread revelling that their absurdly highly paid jobs will become even more highly paid, given what's at stake.

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

#237

Post by actionfromafar »

ethbr1 wrote: post #81
a_wild_dandan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that matter? We're talking trifectas here, not supermajorities. The filibuster is a cute remnant of "decorum." It's a vestigial rule which will disappear when too inconvenient. (Fun question with not-so-fun answers: why isn't the filibuster gone already?)

> (Fun question with not-so-fun answers: why isn't the filibuster gone already?) Because both parties are scared eventually the other party will be back in the majority.

So it seems like a good canary? If it’s removed, the ruling party is no longer afraid it will be ever removed from power.

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

#238

Post by grumple »

phtrivier wrote: post #173

It was floated a few weeks ago they this tax break's disappearance was responsible for mass lay offs in tech. Other theory were AI and interest rates. I'm pretty sure next rounds of layoffs will have another "good reason". Personally, I'm still partial to my pet and hard to document theory of "when headcounts go down, share prices go up - and past a certain size and age, the goal of a massive corporation is not to bu…

This tax issue (not a break - normally you can count employees as a businesss expense for the current year, this made software unusual) meant that startups or other tech companies were extremely disadvantaged in the short term, and had to pay way more in taxes than they should have. For startups, having to pay far more in taxes during the first few years of existence is crippling.

This fixes that problem. That encourages both investment in software and encourages software companies to hire.

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

#239

Post by computerthings »

drstewart wrote: post #184
saubeidl wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An organization of goons who grab people off the street and disappear them to concentration camps? Why does that sound so familiar? Capitalists have always been involved in the rise of fascist movements.

>Why does that sound so familiar? Probably because you've seen it repeated so much in your hyper-propaganda bubble of reddit that you've started to believe it

[dead]

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

#240

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

g0db1t wrote: post #203
bravesoul2 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not convinced. Offshore has been possible since forever. Maybe IC cam be remote now. Your team can be global. US lead, 2 India based devs, 2 brazil devs. But not having this wasn't a blocker for saving money. 10, 100 or 500 people team in India who could work in the office together was possible forever. It will change. I think once other countries become bigger investment centres. Not sure how yet though. US is a goo…

Yeah, there's simply a lot of 'Muricans thinking programming and software dev. for some reason only can be done inside of the US. As a EU senior dev I know zero senior devs making six figures pa - Go figure

Six figures isn't special in the US for skilled tech workers. My starting salary as a college grad 25 years ago was an unremarkable $55K when dotcoms were slinging six figure salaries and options. That is now $102K.
Post reply on HN