Only a small portion of activities count as R&D for R&D tax credit purposes. R&E is a much bigger category and where the problem lies. This write up has a good graphic showing the magnitude (scroll halfway) https://www.striketax.com/journal/tcja-and-the-resulting-tax...
The problem is that this tax change is artificially inflating profits. Companies previously had the choice between expensing (writing off entirely) and amortizing (spreading out) these costs, and now they must be amortized.
It is especially problematic since it categorizes all software development as R&D even if we don't think of it as R&D. It's still unclear what the IRS considers "software development" since they've never had to define it, but the way most big companies with their well-paid accountants are proceeding are that it covers new product development AND new features on existing products, but not bug fixes/maintenance.
Let's take a simple example. Imagine a profitable small software company that made $1M in revenue last year, spent $700,000 on developer salaries and $200,000 on other expenses. Ordinarily, they'd be able to write off $900,000 and have a taxable net income of $100,000 that matches their actual profit. Assuming a tax rate of 25% that's a $25,000 tax bill.
Now, if you assume developers spent 50% of their time building new products and new features, and 50% of other expenses were on new features, only $420,000 of the salary costs and $110,000 of other expenses are write-offs. Their taxable income just went from $100,000 to $470,000.
Assuming a 25% tax rate, their tax bill is now $117,500 for 2022 — which exceeds their actual net income. This also inflates their quarterly tax payments for 2023, both of which hit right now.
This gets even worse for companies that aren't profitable, as they don't have the cash flow to cover a tax bill when they hadn't planned on having one at all. And given the current financial environment, it's hard for startups to get any kind of additional financing or funding.
> The problem is that this tax change is artificially inflating profits
Not exactly. It's a well-established accounting principle that you capitalize costs that provide a benefit over multiple years. Depreciation is an easy-to-understand example. It's more true that the historic practice of expensing R&D costs was artificially inflating costs.
What the tax change is doing is forcing amortization, which, for early-stage companies is difficult, because they have depended on expensing early and recognizing income later.
It's a difficult issue. There are good arguments on both sides. But it sounds like this was a surprise, which is surely not optimal.
fwiw, when I was running start-ups (80s/90s/00s), my recollection is that we amortized our software development costs. I guess this got turned around by the rise of the sophisticated startup world, with more accountants, lawyers, and lobbyists. And now the government is pushing back, not without reason.
>> Not exactly. It's a well-established accounting principle that you capitalize costs that provide a benefit over multiple years.
OK, so lets flip this. I'm a founder working for free, as many founders do. We code on nights and weekends and produce hundreds of thousands of dollars of capital value. If the business doesnt work out, can I claim all this as a loss?
We cant have it both ways, can we? So I should be able to take losses on these hundreds of git repos I have with thousands of hours of unpaid work?
Technically, I would assume that you probably can claim this as a capital loss if you have actually realized a loss (eg you spent money on software related to the business or something), but those are capped at $6,000 a year. Those expenses previously could have gone on a schedule C, though.
The gains on taxes are uncapped, but the losses are capped per year. I think if you have a bigger loss, you can carry it forward even as an individual and apply it against future gains (or take another $3000 deduction). Apparently the limit is $3000 for married couples, I thought it was $3000 for individuals.
It's $3k period, for offsetting normal earned income. There is no cap on offsetting capital gains (for example, from selling stock). And you can do both, e.g. wipe out for example $20k in capital gains then another $3k in normal income.
I sold a business at a $60k loss 4-5 years ago and between capital gains offsets and normal income deductions I still have about $30k in deductions left.
Founders work for free because they're investing, taking a risk like all investments. If they lose the bet, they lose. No harm, no foul. That's true of any investment you and I make. People lose money on investments every day.
There are a lot concepts being not very well defined here: employment, investing, taxation, salaries. It's not all one thing.
What is it that you think "we" are having both ways?
> And now the government is pushing back, not without reason.
Is it? Seems like lawmakers just messed up in reaching an agreement to extend something that is usually extended. Typical congress games.
From light reading, Republican leadership seems to be the main blocker since extending the provision has bipartisan support. You would think that extending this and child tax credits would be no-brainers for Republican leadership, but here we are.
That could well be. But maybe it's not so obviously a good thing as it may sound to startup ears. Matching income and expenses is a pretty good way to keep your financial head about you.
No, it is. That's literally why this happened, it was used as a bargaining chip/to buy time and they never cleaned it up. It's not supposition or a guess, it's the stated intent and consequence.
> it's not so obviously a good thing
Let's say you earn a million dollars before salary and you have 10 engineers working for you each making $100k. You pay out your salary and have $0 profit at the end of the year.
With this change, you are taxed as if you made $800k profit, so unless you've got a couple hundred grand in your bank account this is easily enough to bankrupt a business and put those 10 engineers out of work.
It would be one thing if the $800k was in the bank and this was Hollywood accounting to make it seem like it's not profit. But this is money that was paid to employees and now the business is expected to pay taxes on it as if it was never paid. It's absolutely farcical how anyone could look at this and not see it as ridiculous.
I think you're just missing the whole venture capital/startup ecosystem concept. VCs and founders are well aware of accounting principles and can/should plan accordingly.
BTW, I founded and ran four companies and faced this very situation plenty of times. In my day (this was a while ago), we generally had to, or did, amortize development costs. I'm not saying I loved paying the tax bills, but the concept is neither farcical nor ridiculous.
> No, it is. That's literally why this happened, it was used as a bargaining chip/to buy time and they never cleaned it up. It's not supposition or a guess, it's the stated intent and consequence.
Unfortunately, I think a lot of hacker news posters give plausible deniability to that leadership in order to avoid cognitive dissonance with how certain political leaders that they support are not business friendly at all.
> And now the government is pushing back, not without reason.
What reason is that? Increased tax revenue (in the short term at least)? Because if there's no difference in the long term then it seems pretty dumb to inflict financial turmoil for no net gain.
Well, yes, increased tax revenue, of course. There may be no/little difference in the long term; that's over my economics pay grade. It seems like the model of raise a lot of money, spend a lot of money, expense it, pay no taxes, then go bankrupt is a pretty straightforward way there might be a difference long term. And that's a very common scenario, I think you'd agree.
> that you capitalize costs that provide a benefit over multiple years
Do you see a difference between software development in a consulting business model (instant one-off benefit) and software development in a saas product business model (benefit over multiple years)?
> There are good arguments on both sides.
Can you provide the good arguments for capitalizing software development costs and not expensing it?
Can you explain the reasoning of charging taxes to a company that has revenue beyond merely 1/5th of its expenses (actually 1/10th in the first year, or 1/30th for international operations) and hence still heavily investing cash?
> Do you see a difference between software development in a consulting business model (instant one-off benefit) and software development in a saas product business model (benefit over multiple years)?
Yes. Not sure what that has to do with this discussion.
> Can you provide the good arguments for capitalizing software development costs and not expensing it?
Yes. The well-established accounting principle of matching income and expenses.
> Can you explain the reasoning of charging taxes to a company that has revenue beyond merely 1/5th of its expenses (actually 1/10th in the first year, or 1/30th for international operations) and hence still heavily investing cash?
Yes. See the answer to your second question. Companies often have to make investments. If they buy a Big Machine, they don't get to write it off in one year. There's nothing nefarious about amortizing costs over their useful life.
> Yes. Not sure what that has to do with this discussion.
Because the law seems to be very strict that all software development should be capitalized. So would you suggest to split the revenue recognition depending on the corresponding business model of the product corresponding to the software development?
> If they buy a Big Machine, they don't get to write it off in one year. There's nothing nefarious about amortizing costs over their useful life.
It seems the capitalization of the wage of a software developer is being defended and put equal to the capitalisation of the cost of a Big Machine. I still see an unfair difference made in the reasoning. Let’s take following example
* Software developer has a wage cost in year 1 and builds a SaaS tool in year 1. The developer’s useful life w.r.t. the incurred cost is indeed 1 year and the revenue generating period of the product is 5 years.
* Big machine (crane) has a purchase cost in year 1 and builds a warehouse in year 1. The crane’s useful life w.r.t. the incurred cost is 5 years and the revenue generating period of the product is 30 years.
It’s being claimed that both the software developer's first year wage and the Big Machine purchase cost should be capitalised over 5 years. But that’s comparing apples with pears: either both should be capitalised over their own useful life w.r.t. the incurred cost (1 year vs. 5 years) or both should be capitalised over the revenue generating period of their product (5 year vs. 30 years).
Three other thought experiments:
* You should capitalize a crane when you buy it and you should expense when you (properly w.r.t. accounting principles) rent and use it for a year to build something. But when you rent a software developer (= hire) for a year to build something, that should be capitalized?
* When the crane is being sold or breaks down, you recognise a gain or loss and the capitalization stops. When the software developer leaves the company, is the capitalisation of the developer’s wage still continuing?
* I come work for you for the next five years as a software developer, but you have to pay me my wage immediately for the upcoming five years. Also you have to buy a GPU server that I will use to build my product and that will supposedly last 5 years. Are you capitalising both my cost and the GPU over 5 years? Or will you be capitalising my cost way longer than the GPU, even both I’m gone after 5 years and the GPU broke down?
I've seen previous discussions about this on HN but there seemed to be disagreement about whether this change required developer salaries to be treated as R+D or only allowed it.
If this is really the way it works, defining some salaries as necessarily not being deductible from revenues, then it makes no sense for multiple reasons.
First the developers are still paying income tax on their salaries so that money is getting doubly taxed in the year the revenues are received.
Second the government generally seeks to encourage employment. This would have the exact opposite effect because any employee you hire who's doing software development would cost you (1 + 4/5) times their salary in the near term.
I wonder how much of the downturn in tech employment this year is being caused by this.
Yeah, what I said isn't completely accurate, because I didn't take into account the tax rate. But the factor is still larger than 1, assuming you have any revenue at all, because in addition to what you payed them in salary you have to pay tax on the 4/5ths of their salary you couldn't deduct in the current year.
The burn cash but not necessarily profit. If they built the software in 1 year for 1,000,000, they would carry an asset of 1,000,000. They burned 1,000,000 in cash but have a 1,000,000 asset. They had salary expense of 1,000,000 and revenue of 0. Say they make 300,000 in revenue for the next 5 years based on that software. That means they would be able to expense $200,000 against the $300,000 in income, paying taxes on just $100,000 in income each of those years. At the end of that time the asset has zero value.
The other option is they take a 1,000,000 loss that first year, and then pay tax on all $300,000 for each of the succeeding years. Either way, at the end of six years, There was $1,500,000 in revenue and $1,000,000 in expenses.
As far as the treatment of bug fixes, the rules around improvements and repairs probably cover that. If you fix a bug like a bad calculation - that's probably opex, like replacing a part on a machine. If you add a feature that extends the life of the product, like adding an API for outside developers, that would be an improvement and capitalized. This is like refurbishing equipment to extend its useful service life.
> If they built the software in 1 year for 1,000,000, they would carry an asset of 1,000,000.
Isn't normal accounting principles usually that if a company pays $M salaries, then regardless of whether those salaries paid for an asset or not, they are an expense that's 100% deducted from the income when calculating taxes?
Are we saying that at a company with 2 desks where 1 is a marketing person or accountant and 1 is a software dev, their salaries would deduce differently from the company bottom line, because the software developer is said to create "assets"? Isn't the marketing of that asset likely to be build the value of it in the same way as the research and engineering does?
It does make some logical sense, but I don't see how it would be worth the hassle, especially when you consider that it only "works" in the long term scenario but creates all sorts of cash flow problems in the short term.
And THAT is the real question. Does it make economic sense long term. I can’t believe I got downvoted by saying from an accounting perspective it makes sense to test it like any other asset. But does it promote a better outcome if we do? We have all sorts of accelerated depreciation schedules for tax purposes, to promote certain activities. Note that for financial reporting purposes it’s possibly what some companies already do. Even though they expense it for tax purposes. We’re just talking about taxable, not GAAP income.
Yes, that is the case. If you’re building a warehouse, the wages paid to the construction workers are capitalized. The wages paid to your accounts payable are probably not capitalized with construction cost.
Not very familiar with the US tax system, but is there no option to treat "R&D spending" as a normal business expense, forgoing all R&D incentives or tax credits?
If what you are doing is software development then obviously it is a development activity that falls within the meaning of development for purposes of tax laws.
Software programming that does not constitute development, such as bug fixing, is not subject to capitalization.
R+D is "research and development", not "research" and "development". It's specifically development of research into new products. Otherwise a carpenter could be seen as "developing" wood into cabinets. If there's no research or experimental process involved in the work, then it's not R+D.
I can imagine Unicorn Research Inc deciding to rename all “developer” titles to “programmer” titles, and removing the word “Research” from the company name.
I love when people on the Internet tell me I've been doing my job wrong for a decade...
It's research (as in new knowledge) and development (as in new products based on existing research and knowledge). Software generally falls into the latter category. A scientific process is not required but does make it easier to document qualification for the R&D credit.
And yes, a carpenter developing new cabinet designs absolutely would qualify for the R&D credit (and their salary could fall under the scope of this rule change).
> It's research (as in new knowledge) and development (as in new products based on existing research and knowledge).
This is... Exactly what I said?
> And yes, a carpenter developing new cabinet designs absolutely would qualify for the R&D credit (and their salary could fall under the scope of this rule change).
I feel I pretty clearly alluded to the physical process of turning wood into a cabinet, not developing novel new techniques for doing such.
This change was passed in 2017 in order to pay for the tax cuts, effectively a five-year time bomb. Congress basically did this as an accounting trick to pay for them, yet never intended for it to take effect.
Yes, this is the question - how many companies will make it to the point where they get the full write-off, especially with the double-whammy of 2022 higher + Q1 2023 higher hitting at the same time.
Many accountants aren't even aware yet, meaning that some people who have already filed their business taxes for 2022 will end up owing the stratospherically higher bill PLUS interest and potentially penalties when the IRS notices (or their accountant notices and they re-file). The IRS starts charging interest as of the due date.
