Hey, person behind this project here. Thanks for posting.<p>The changes to Section 174 are a massive problem for companies that build and sell software because now <i>all</i> software development -- which includes both building new products and adding new features to existing ones -- must be amortized. (Time and resources spent on fixes can still be expensed.)<p>If you're unfamiliar with the issue, I have an explainer thread here. This thread was fact checked by tax experts before posting. [1.1]<p>This includes salaries as well as other expenses, like servers. I did an example breakdown in this post.[1.2]<p>There's a lot of confusion with this and the R&D tax credit. Software development falls under what the tax code calls "R&E" (research and experimental), which is a much broader category than R&D. This article [2] does a good job explaining the difference.<p>Reverting Section 174 to allow companies to expense software development has widespread and bipartisan support in Congress, but unfortunately they feel no urgency on the matter. Big companies have been engaging with Congress on this for four years, but it still hasn't happened -- likely because it's seen as a big business issue even though it impacts companies of any size. This is where small software companies come in, and this letter specifically.<p>The goal of sending this letter on Tax Day is to make Congress understand that these changes are already making small software companies' tax bills skyrocket to the point where they may have to go out of business. It makes funded unprofitable startups profitable and taxable (and who can raise extra capital right now?!), and lean but profitable bootstrapped companies are taking out lines of credit just to pay their tax bills.<p>This is not a hypothetical issue. People are already receiving these astronomically-higher tax bills. [3,4] We have to join together so Congress knows this is an urgent problem.<p>NOTE: Please only sign this if you're a US citizen with a US company. There will be a point later when we'll bring others into the effort. But for right now, in order to get small businesses into the legislative conversation and shake things up and hopefully speed this along, we are focusing on founders at the moment. Small businesses are politically sympathetic but horribly disorganized as a bloc, and we have to change that first if we have any hope of this ever coming to a vote.<p>[1.1] <a href="https://twitter.com/mjwhansen/status/1640696365637419008" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/mjwhansen/status/1640696365637419008</a><p>[1.2] <a href="https://www.indiehackers.com/post/this-us-tax-change-could-kill-your-business-and-it-already-took-effect-a87a7afa23" rel="nofollow">https://www.indiehackers.com/post/this-us-tax-change-could-k...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/lynnmucenskikeck/2023/03/24/five-surprises-about-the-us-tax-research--experimental-capitalization-requirement/?sh=6329052351ae" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/lynnmucenskikeck/2023/03/24/fiv...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://twitter.com/LandonB32/status/1636026627887964162" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/LandonB32/status/1636026627887964162</a><p>[4] (Paywalled) <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/small-businesses-face-big-tax-bills-from-research-deduction-change-a189b113" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/articles/small-businesses-face-big-tax-b...</a>