Great
Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)
951–957 of 957 posts
Re: Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)
#952Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Salary for building assets generally are capitalizable. Construction companies have a special carve out because they typically are hired to build the assets for someone else and are paid for the completion of the construction work. A factory worker building a product to be sold is capitalized into inventory
The product can be capitalised into inventory. The factory worker's salary is just a cost.
The key thing here is that while you generally are expected to and allowed to consider a produced good an asset, it's not assumed that paying someone salary translates immediately into an asset... unless it's software under this new rule for some reason
Re: Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)
#953Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think any idiot with two functioning neurons can see the ruling class of India is trying to pull the same strategy China used to take manufacturing: consistently undercut foreign wages, centralizing knowledge and power before turning it on their customers and extracting wealth and power from countries or organizations that outsourced to them in the first place. I think it’s less a matter of who has more or less pow…
The framing of your quote seems to think that people who are clearly not in charge, are the ones in charge that can do something about it eh? Or, frankly, that if the people who are not currently in charge were put in charge, something different would be happening. It seems rather silly, frankly.
If you’re assuming title and rank is the sole decider of who is “in charge”, then your argument holds water.
In all other cases, it falls apart like wet newspaper.
Frankly.
Re: Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)
#954Earlier quoted context omitted.
The framing of your quote seems to think that people who are clearly not in charge, are the ones in charge that can do something about it eh? Or, frankly, that if the people who are not currently in charge were put in charge, something different would be happening. It seems rather silly, frankly.
If you’re assuming title and rank is the sole decider of who is “in charge”, then your argument holds water. In all other cases, it falls apart like wet newspaper. Frankly.
Concrete Examples? Or just bullshit?
You can frame it as the autowalas are the ones ‘Really running India’ all you want. But they aren’t the ones running the IT department or setting tax policy, eh?
Re: Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)
#955A 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…
Your wrong! In your example, youe $200K engineer... can deduct 10% 1st year $20K, 20% or $40K for the next 4 years, and 10% year 6 $20K for a total of $200K deduction. This is called the 5-year rule.
Re: Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)
#956Discussion from beginning of 2023:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34627712
Re: Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)
#957Discussion from beginning of 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34627712
Yup, thanks! I put together this list at one point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44203869.
Btw, this thread got a callout in https://www.axios.com/2025/06/20/silicon-valley-big-tech-tax... today, though they didn't link to it.