Hey everyone,<p>Was just starting the tax process for 2022 and found out about the changes that have been made to Section 174 that take effect this year. Essentially, all R&E expenses must now be amortized over 5 years (instead of taking them as a regular full deduction in the year in which they are incurred), and on top of that all "software development" is now an R&E expense. [1][2]<p>This seems like a disaster for any bootstrapped software company. As an example, if you make $100k in income, and spend $90k making the software, at first glance you've got a successful company bringing in a 10% profit margin. Previously, you would have just paid tax on that $10k in profit. Makes sense.<p>Under these new rules, the US actually says "that $90k you spent to make the software has to be spread over 5 years, and you can actually only take 10% of it in the first year." Suddenly you've gone from a profit of $10k to a "profit" of $91k for tax purposes. Even at a 30% tax rate (which isn't even close to the top rate in the US), you're staring down a $27k tax bill that you're somehow supposed to pay out of the $10k in actual cash you have left on hand.<p>To be clear, you will eventually get the taxes you pay back over the next 5 years. But how are bootstrapped companies without access to large capital reserves or investment supposed to come up with the money to pay these tax bills while they wait it out? For every dollar you spend on making software, you've now got to have 30+ cents in reserve just to pay the tax bill for the year!<p>I am completely flabbergasted as to how this was thought to be a good idea...it seems like it drastically increases the cost of starting a bootstrapped software company in the US, which is just terrible policy in general.<p>Was just curious -- is this interpretation what others are hearing from their own tax professionals? Is it affecting others and if so how are you dealing with it?<p>[1] https://rsmus.com/insights/services/business-tax/looming-required-capitalization-of-section-174-expenditures.html<p>[2] https://www.taxnotes.com/research/federal/usc26/174
I am not a tax expert but my understanding is that a business would claim expenditure as R&D <i>because</i> of the beneficial tax treatment: it's a choice you make to categorise expenditure as R&D, you're under no obligation to do so. If the tax treatment of R&D spend has changed to be less favourable in your circumstance (i.e: you can't afford the short term cost of amortisation) then you would not claim the spend to be R&D related. After all, a small technology company working on their revenue-generating product is not doing anything experimental: it's only experimental if you massage it as such.<p>I could be far off the mark -- so please correct me if I am wrong -- but your framing suggests that if a business spends money on software development then they must amortise the cost which does not seem to be correct.
It’s an absolutely fucked situation. In what world is revenue taxed *before* expenses. It’s a nuclear bomb for US innovation. Meanwhile China offers a 2x credit and the EU is almost as generous.<p>Our accountants have been apologizing for a month now about the lack of heads up because they were confident congress would extend it like they always have. Nope.
Everyone commenting in this thread that R&D can be written off is working with outdated information and is not up to date with the current state of play.<p>I had the exact same conversation with my CPA last month. They told me the same things that you were told by your CPA: R&D expenses, including software development, must always be amortized over 5 years starting in FY22. The R&D tax credit has nothing to do with it. There is no option to deduct these expenses. Amortization also now applies to failed or abandoned R&D projects, which is a major change that seems likely to be devastating to innovation.<p>In my opinion this rule is a disaster. Call your congressperson and your senators: <a href="https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member" rel="nofollow">https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member</a>
>I am completely flabbergasted as to how this was thought to be a good idea...it seems like it drastically increases the cost of starting a bootstrapped software company in the US, which is just terrible policy in general.<p>Oh it's a terrible policy for you. Yes, for you, the person who may want to actually create something which threatens the people who own large businesses, this is quite terrible. But for the people with lobbyists who want to make sure competition is made almost impossible to happen, it's just amazing.
Yes, it's a big issue. It's fascinating how little it's talked about. I think this requires that we organize grassroots visibility into this. Also, wouldn't YC have some mechanisms to organize? I mean, I think this impacts every tech business other than unicorns.
I have a tax pro for this very reason, but my understanding is that you have a choice on how you want the tax treatment -- you can deduct it now as a business expense or over five years as R&D, which gives you a better tax deduction in the long run but fewer up front benefits. But at the end of the day I pay the tax guy to worry about it for me.
According to Journal Of Accountancy[0] this seems to only apply to software expenses that are also treated as R&D expenses. So if you expense the costs and don't claim R&D credit you lose the credit but would also not have the cash flow issue being described. It's still a net negative but at least less negative for current year cash flow.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2022/nov/amortizing-r-e-expenditures-under-tcja.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2022/nov/amortiz...</a>
> ...and spend $90k making the software<p>Well, did you spend the $90k on W2 salaried employees, or to a vendor?<p>> Essentially, all R&E expenses...<p>The R&D tax credit was too good to be true anyway.<p>The crazy loopholes are crazy. What were people expecting?<p>Congress was not going to let people outsource "R&D", which in the bulk of cases is large companies like Accenture and small companies like bullshit agencies doing straight-up software customization that had little to do with real research or development.<p>Insofar as it affects startups, the amended law seems to exist explicitly to rein in the pro-forma declarations / reports template-generated by non-specialists.<p>Every tax or HR related firm in existence has been hawking this bullshit to tech companies for a while. Truly a bunch of parasites.<p>Congress needs to repeal the R&D tax credit as it exists today and allow people to ordinarily expense whatever it is that they are doing.<p>If it feels there is a good reason to make the money-to-US-salaries tax-reduced, it should make a simple blanket declaration checkbox for a narrow set of qualifications that would obviate the need of "R&D tax credit specialists."
Wow. I had no idea this was happening. Not a peep from my accountant, either.<p>I have an S-Corp so "profit" would pass through to my personal taxes.<p>I've found over the years that most people writing and administering tax and business regulations at the local, state, and federal level have little clue about the needs of small businesses, whether it's a software startup or a local pizza place.
I am not a tax expert at all, but I pay some tax experts a lot of money, because I do a lot of bootstrapped R&D and the tax laws around it are nuts. My accountant has suggested that I am totally fine, but my lawyer told me he wanted to do more research (not that this was an outright bad rule), but didn't think I would be stuck on this. I declined on the research (legal research is very expensive). My lawyer is very conservative, and my accountant is very liberal on this sort of thing, so that's the range of opinions I'm looking at.<p>In general, I'm not so sure this is particularly apocalyptic unless you are bootstrapping with high expenses, and you are doing hard tech without a launched product. If you have a launched product, software development can be an operating expense. If you don't, it's harder to justify. If what you are doing has low technical risk, you can also put the number in a different spot on your income/loss statement and operationalize it. If what you are doing has low expenses, it probably doesn't matter much either way because it's not worth anyone's time to figure out if you can actually claim the credit.<p>If you <i>are</i> bootstrapping a hard tech product and have not launched anything yet, I hope you can afford the amoritzation, because you might not be able to afford your technical risk either.
Gosh, doesn't this just reek of a move to entrench established big business by erecting regulatory hurdles, designed primarily to prevent anyone from following their path to success.<p>That may not be a charitable take, but the politicians and corporations no longer deserve an ounce of beneficial doubt when it comes to the games they play.
> But how are bootstrapped companies without access to large capital reserves or investment supposed to come up with the money to pay these tax bills while they wait it out?<p>You can go to the bank and take out a loan. It's called a "factor loan", and tax receivables are solid collateral.
It also says in Sec. 1.174-3 Treatment as expenses:<p>> Research or experimental expenditures paid or incurred by a taxpayer during the taxable year in connection with his trade or business are deductible as expenses, and are not chargeable to capital account, if the taxpayer adopts the method provided in section 174(a)<p>Seems like there could be room to challenge "all software dev is R&D"
The answer is you spend part of the 10% profit on a CPA or tax lawyer. The legal deductions, they are so many. I've run a bootstrapped software business for 14 years and I never even heard of this one until your post.
There's an R&D tax credit. See [1]. I would aggressively pursue this option. Much better than a deduction anyway.<p>1: <a href="https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2023/01/rd-considerations-in-the-time-of-nondeductibility" rel="nofollow">https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2023/01/rd-co...</a>
I have been reading the comments, I cannot help.<p>But it is a powerful argument for simple tax codes.<p>I like the idea of tax. I'm happy to pay my share. I am in unhappy about all the leeching lawyers<p>I expect in your country as in mine, rules are made by lawyers and mainly benefit them
I am in the same position - my accountant got an opinion from a CPA who said that software development costs _must_ now be capitalized. My company sells support and maintenance contracts for some open-source software, and so the 'software development' entails updating the software to work on newer operating systems and platforms etc. Contractor programmers are paid to do this software maintenance work.<p>At issue seems to be the interpretation of the change introduced in Section 174(3) saying:<p>"(3) Software development
For purposes of this section, any amount paid or incurred in connection with the development of any software shall be treated as a research or experimental expenditure."<p>Does this mean that payments to programmers to fulfill the software maintenance contract _must_ be considered R&E expenditure (and can thus not be deducted as Section 162 "Trade or business expenses" and _must_ be capitalized in terms of the amendments to Section 174).<p>If this is the correct interpretation of the amended law, I would expect large companies like Apple and Alphabet to be subject to this problem as well - surely
it would be material if one of their main costs (being software developer salaries) cannot be expensed from this year. Yet I have seen no comments around this from that side, either explaining suddenly higher earnings or higher taxes due.<p>If that is not the correct interpretation of Section 174(3), and some programming related costs are not to be considered R&E expenditure, how do I explain the reasoning to my accountant?
Granted I may be reading this wrong (dog knows I’m confused over the US tax code at the best of times), but I got the impression from reading this link (<a href="https://www.plantemoran.com/explore-our-thinking/insight/2022/12/section-174-research-expense-rule-changes-excluded-from-final-bill-of-2022" rel="nofollow">https://www.plantemoran.com/explore-our-thinking/insight/202...</a>) that the 5 year rule wasn’t yet in place.
What are some examples of R&D expenses that couldn't easily be categorized as regular expenses?<p>If I run a software business that brings in 100k but spends 90k on developers, then thats money going for salaries or contracting, both of which are fully deductible.
How does this apply to individual software dev consultants/contractors who operate under an LLC?<p>(Obligatory "should ask a CPA" but I don't see much mention of this case around anywhere)
Yuck, it seems like no exceptions, minimums, or safe harbors that I can find. Definitely something to keep in mind and save/price accordingly. Seems like bootstrapped software needs to charge 30-50% more than 2021 and prior, at least for the first 5 years.
Why is everyone so confused? You only pay taxes on profit. Period. That hasn't changed and probably never will.<p>If you do “R&D” you <i>can</i> elect to receive a credit. This credit which used to come all in one year, now must be amortized over 5.<p>If you don’t want that to happen or cant afford it, don’t take the credit. It’s that simple. Not all software development is automatically forced to be R&D. That’s absurd.<p>IANAA just a poor misinformed internet soul and this is not tax advice.
First I’m even hearing about section 174. I just pinged my managed accounting and tax service.<p>Shameless plug, but if you have a small business and looking for somebody to manage S corp, payroll, accounting, taxes, I highly recommend <a href="http://collective.com" rel="nofollow">http://collective.com</a>. I just integrated with them for 2023. Use my promo code if you want, gives us both discounts. <a href="https://share.collective.com/JK2020" rel="nofollow">https://share.collective.com/JK2020</a>
Do you do your own taxes? Pilot is $500 a month, might be worth it if you're unsure how to handle this. I'm not associated with Pilot, just a big fan of outsourcing things like this.<p><a href="https://pilot.com/pricing" rel="nofollow">https://pilot.com/pricing</a>