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Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)

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Re: Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)

#691

What inspired working to reverse this now? I'm all for it, just curious as the law has existed for 8 years and been in effect for 3. Seemingly little interest from anyone in the tech world to put lobbying behind reversing it until this point. What changed?

At the beginnning, to most people it seemed like a non-issue (oh no, amortize the costs over 5 years, cry me a river big tech etc. etc.). But now that the entire tech sector is crumbling, and nobody is getting hired, people are giving it another (well-deserved) look.

Re: Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)

#692

Software is one of the few things that the US still dominates at. Looks like this will change soon.

I think that was the whole point of this change. "Too much tech, not enough coal mines" seems to be Trump's whole thing.

Re: Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)

#693
post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most European countries don't have deductions for SW devs. Romania had it for a long time and removed it due to gov budget deficits. Some other CEE countries might still have them, but in general most socialist western European countries don't have them, which is why they don't have a tech industry.

What do you mean? I am in Eastern Europe and as far as know software development costs are fully deductible just like any other employee costs. Even more so for startups in Estonia and Latvia (probably Lithuania too) you can fully deduct R&D in general - not sure for how long. That is you have you have 1M in sales 200k in net profit(after paying for everything including software development). If that 200k in net prof…

>What do you mean?

Exactly what I wrote.

>I am in Eastern Europe and[...]

Eastern Europe is not a country. Every EU country has completely different legal and tax regimes. And I specifically said that some CEE countries are the exception and do exactly what you said, but that high-tax/high-welfare EU countries usually do not, since their welfare deficit is so high they don't hand out special tax incentives for SW industry as they need to tax everything that moves in order to not go bust, and due to their tiny SW industry, tax breaks for SW work would be politically unpopular with the majority voters working in other industries which see SW devs as overpaid and spoiled already. It's a tragedy of the commons coupled with crabs in a bucket mentality.

So how does your comment contradict mine? Read it again, maybe you missed it.

>you can fully deduct R&D in general

Depends what each country defines as R&D in their legal framework and how much creative accounting you're legally allowed to do. Some countries don't count web app development as R&D though, so of course have a lot less successful unicorns, and a less developed SW industry. R&D tends to be more like pharma, aerospace, lasers, bio engineering, that kind of stuff, not building another food delivery app.

Re: Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)

#694
post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's nuts, since a payroll should never be considered an asset. That's because it's not "a payroll". When a payrolled resource builds a combustion engine that powers the office where the rest of the payrolled resources work every day and that engine lasts 15 years, then its a very clearly a capital expense and an asset.

Under these rules no. If the "machine" is software, payroll is considered a capital expense and an asset. If it's an actual machine, payroll for building it is fully deductible, like most other payroll. Software used to work like other payroll until fairly recently. If you want to understand this figure out why that changed and what the actual motivation behind it was

> If it's an actual machine, payroll for building it is fully deductible, like most other payroll.

Not if the machine is used as an integral part of manufacturing, production, or extraction, or an integral part of furnishing transportation, communications, electrical energy, gas, water, or sewage disposal services by a person engaged in a trade or business of furnishing any such service, or is a research or storage facility used in connection with any of the foregoing activities.

Re: Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)

#695
post #541

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…

The idea that this is leading to mass developer layoffs is an overstatement. The total amount spent will ultimately be expensed, whether immediately or over five years. The sole impact is on the time value of money, which I don't believe warrants the current scale of developer dismissals. Also, the claim that taxes are levied even during a deficit seems incorrect. While I'm not familiar with US tax law, it's typicall…

It means you need more money early, to pay taxes on theoretical future profits. That means it costs more. That means you can afford less on the same money. That means that you need to lay off people to maintain the same costs.

Re: Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)

#696

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…

If you’re building software that is intended to be used for longer than a year then it should be capitalized. The argument on HN is always just complaining that it’s unfavorable to devs; but it’s perfectly reasonable with regards to actual tax principles.

Almost all other payroll is deductible. Why is salary for someone building a house deductible, but salary for someone building a for loop a capital expense

Look into when this started and why and you might understand it

Re: Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)

#697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not in a way that makes us even easier to hate, for a start. You really want a big noisy political carveout in what is already being called the largest upward wealth transfer in history? You want to find out what it's like to be in a line of work that has the reputation for having to steal from the American people to survive? We have enough of that reputation already. This is bullshit. The carveout already exists an…

This is politics. Perceptions matter. Changing the status quo is more difficult because it is the status quo, and that also matters. If you want to sell this change, the way to do it is to hammer on the fact that it was Trump's own TCJA that created the current situation, or that it was the machinations of a hostile Congress that so perverted the original intent of the TCJA, depending on audience. But even that is no…

I don’t know what bubble you’re living in but the “narrative” here is easily defensible. “The software engineering profession has been gutted by layoffs that explicitly make them 5x more expensive to startups than lawyers, electrical engineers, and doctors. This hurts both workers and employers while benefiting nobody other than foreign firms.”

Nobody of relevance is mad people in tech get paid well. The only slice who are is a small percentage of people in housing constrained areas who attribute the housing failures of California to 5% of the SF workforce.

> I'm telling you how things are.

Claiming something is “how things are” is just assuming the conclusion and is one of the dumbest ways to engage in discussion. It’s literally, “I’m just telling you how I’m right.”

Re: Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)

#699
post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

source?

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26/1.263(a)-2 Example 4. Acquisition or production cost. D purchases and produces jigs, dies, molds, and patterns for use in the manufacture of D's products. Assume that each of these items is a unit of property as determined under § 1.263(a)-3(e) and is not a material and supply under § 1.162-3(c)(1). D is required to capitalize under paragraph (d)(1) of this section the amounts…

which applies for the part of the work producing a tangible asset; it was an option for software development before. Now all software is considered such an asset, which is a huge change and distinct from how other labor works

Re: Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)

#700
post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26/1.263(a)-2 Example 4. Acquisition or production cost. D purchases and produces jigs, dies, molds, and patterns for use in the manufacture of D's products. Assume that each of these items is a unit of property as determined under § 1.263(a)-3(e) and is not a material and supply under § 1.162-3(c)(1). D is required to capitalize under paragraph (d)(1) of this section the amounts…

which applies for the part of the work producing a tangible asset; it was an option for software development before. Now all software is considered such an asset, which is a huge change and distinct from how other labor works

You asked for a source for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44233155

I thought it was for the first paragraph.

But I was wrong about 174, maybe you meant that.

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