Comment by Reason077
6 months ago
The OBBBA (“Big Beautiful Bill”) suspends amortization requirements for domestic R&D expenditure, and explicitly allows domestic software development as an R&D expenditure eligible for immediate expensing.
The new rules would apply from 2025 to Dec 31, 2029:
https://www.crowell.com/en/insights/client-alerts/house-comm...
Repealing SB174 has bipartisan support. The house already passed its repeal but it died in Senate because a separate took (that also repealed it) took its place but that separate bill stalled out.
174 is so small it can't go through both chambers on its own so it needs to get attached a larger bill like OBBA.
It's unfortunate because it appears both sides want this repealed to allow immediate amortization of domestic R&D expenses.
https://abgi-usa.com/section174/latest-and-greatest
> 174 is so small it can't go through both chambers on its own so it needs to get attached a larger bill like OBBA.
There's a minimum size for laws?
Theoretically no, but congress won't vote anything that has no collateral advantages to everybody involved.
4 replies →
Why would a senator from Kentucky vote for a bill that doesn't benefit his state to a meaningful amount?
15 replies →
Anything that's not a budget reconciliation bill can just get filibustered in the senate by the minority party. That's why they're attaching everything to the OBBBA.
I think there is a limit on the number of bills that can make it through the procedures so it’s too low profile to get scheduled.
1 reply →
It's so depressing to hear that congress can't even do small things that everyone agrees upon.
If they could be required to craft single issue bills, this wouldn't be as big an issue. Instead we get the clusters of good and bad that inevitably die or sometimes worse, pass.
If everyone agreed on it, Congress would have no problem doing it (Congress itself, after all, is a subset of "everyone".)
5 replies →
It's perhaps noteworthy that OBBBA is not the first bill to attempt to revert this tax law. It's simply the latest. There have been other attempts to revert section 174.
Other attempts that come to mind: 1. Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024 (H.R. 7024) 2. American Innovation and R&D Competitiveness Act of 2025 (H.R. 1990)
This article is informative: https://www.cebn.org/media_resources/section-174-sign-on-let...
That "suspends" should be understood as "continues to hold-hostage" / "renews as a time-bomb to screw over some other party".
That isn't the reason. They sunset in the bill so it has a lower CBO score (which calculates costs out to 10 years). If you sunset in the bill after 5 years, even if you know it will get renewed, the apparent cost goes down. Get it?
The CBO score is a perfect example of the metric becoming the measure and teaching to the test.
1 reply →
Removing it would make Congress less powerful, and we can't have that now can we.
If anything it has been the opposite problem, with modern congresses having been more than happy to delegate away their powers. You might have heard the recent tariff news for example.
5 replies →
How could Congress get less powerful than now?
5 replies →
That would be the one positive I have heard regarding OBBB. This should be put into its own bill.
That isn’t how legislation is passed. If anything, it needs a section about acceptable tar shingle application standards for roofs within 6 nautical miles of any heliport operated in a subarctic area on the west cost. Then it’s looking like a bill.
Just last year, Congress snapped to attention and wrote and quickly passed a bill to ban the eminent national security threat of a video-sharing app. That bill doesn't do anything else.
Just a reminder that Congress, even now, can rapidly act on a laser focus when it is sufficiently motivated.
12 replies →
And it gets so bizzare that even legislators have to laugh when they read it out loud, like in this case here in Switzerland:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9hztUCq15o
There's a little of this, but more so, you only get one reconciliation bill per year. And anything that's not a reconciliation bill has to be bipartisan.
You forgot renewing the Patriot Act :)
This is a highlight in an otherwise shitty bill.
I saw let Trump’s ugly bill die and then a small fix up to the tax code could be this. Should be able to pass.
This bill is goated for upper middle class and tech and defense sector
And I’m tired of pretending like we aren’t going to be beneficiaries
Every Congress increases the debt, we can acknowledge that the cuts they picked are going to wreck the lower class especially with the medicaid, we can acknowledge that it won’t meet its goals of cuts
but are you guys just scared to acknowledge its going to super charge things that you are a beneficiary of too? so busy saying it just benefits billionaires as if we’re trying to avoid guillotines. not gonna happen and many people here are going to try to take advantage of new programs
You don't want to live in a society where an increasingly large percentage of the population have nothing to lose.
Regardless of whether it benefits our industry or socioeconomic status, it'd be incredibly shortsighted to just do all of that at the expense of the lower classes.
2 replies →
I don’t have to be in support of something just because it benefits me
4 replies →
I agree but I think the huge cuts across public research & development basically hurt everybody in the long term.
1 reply →
Even if you're right, it's only true in the short term. Long term, everyone benefits from a sustainable country, and trillions of new debt isn't heading in that direction.
I have to say that you sound very biased in the way you're talking about the bill. If a primary goal of this administration is to cut and make government more efficient, this bill is about as big of a failure as one could conceive. Any reasonable person would have to admit that.
I'm fine admitting that I would benefit greatly from this bill. I also hope to heaven it doesn't pass because an additional trillion dollars to suit me sounds asinine. I don't need help.
1 reply →
>Every Congress increases the debt,
And yet only one party campaigns on fiscal responsibility, debt concerns, and reduced spending
1 reply →
> This bill is goated for upper middle class and tech and defense sector
No, it's not, because giving its authors any power or wins or ability to execute on their agenda is disastrous for nearly everyone, including tech and the middle class. The only people that its illegal acts are good for is a tiny minority of crooks, fascists, and oligarchs.
Given the firehose of illegal stuff they are doing that is impossible to push back on, it is utterly imperative to push back on every little thing that is possible to push back on, and to hold consent hostage to an end to the former.
You're letting them burn your house down because they promised you a bottle of whiskey.
> domestic software development
So now it seems its like a pseudo tariff against any other freelancers and producers for software outside of US.