Tell Congress to urgently fix R&D expensing
Software developers and software companies are in danger.
Due to new accounting rules that Congress never intended to take effect, software development and other activities the IRS considers R&D can no longer be expensed. Instead, those costs—salaries, servers, etc—must be spread out over 5-15 years.
This is creating phantom profits and making companies' tax bills go up by over 400% in many cases. This is leading to layoffs and cutbacks in software development and R&D spending.
Congress needs to pass a continuing resolition to keep the government funded by November 17, so NOW is the time to tell Congress to retroactively fix R&D expensing. Every Representative and Senator needs to hear from their own constituents about how R&D expensing needs to be fixed urgently.
Congressional staff are required to keep tallies of which issues constituents (i.e. people who live in their district or state) contact their office about and report those tallies to their boss and other staff, so your time is well-spent. And this will only take you a few minutes.
First, choose an email template
If Congressional staff receive the exact same text from 10 people, it only counts as one email—not 10. So add your own flavor to the template!
“A tax code change that impacts how companies account for research and development costs is walloping businesses of all sizes. At best, it is a cash flow challenge, costing large public companies hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, which finance chiefs have said could dent their R&D spending. At worst, business owners wonder if their companies will make it, with some who run small and medium-size firms slowing growth, laying off workers or dipping into personal savings to cover tax bills.”
“Software startups say they were blindsided by shocking tax bills as a result of a change in law related to research and development costs, and if Congress does not provide a retroactive fix, business failures will spread throughout the industry.”