Big Beautiful Bill R&D Tax: Will tech go on a hiring spree again?

9 jbverschoor 10 5/19/2025, 10:03:18 AM
Since 2022, in the US, R&D had to be amortized in 5-15 years. That was one of the reasons (big)tech stopped hiring.

Now, the BBB[1] has changed that under Sec. 111002. Deduction of domestic research and experimental expenditures. Does this mean we can expect bitech to go on a (temporary) hiring spree?

Current Law: Under current law, taxpayers are required to deduct research or experimental expenditures over a five-year period. Research or experimental expenditures that are attributable to research conducted outside the U.S. are required to be deducted over a 15-year period.

Provision: This provision allows taxpayers to immediately deduct domestic research or experimental expenditures paid or incurred in taxable years beginning after December 31, 2024, and before January 1, 2030. This provision includes rules to coordinate the immediate deductibility of domestic research or experimental expenditures with the research credit, rules clarifying the treatment of foreign research or experimental expenditures, and other coordinating changes.

[1] https://waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/The-One-Big-Beautiful-Bill-Section-by-Section.pdf

Comments (10)

codingdave · 2h ago
That link is just a summary of the bill. If anyone wants to read the actual content, it is here: https://budget.house.gov/imo/media/doc/one_big_beautiful_bil...

(1116 pages)

jotux · 1h ago
>Since 2022

I feel like this deserves a little more detail than just the year it was started. During Trump's first administration his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) amended Section 174 of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), but it started this change in 2022.

Here's good article outlining some of the significant tax implications: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/section-174/

>Here is how the S174 change impacted some companies, based on what I found in their annual reports:

>Microsoft: $4.8B additional tax paid in 2023. The company generated a $72B profit that year, so this tax increase was manageable. It’s still a very large amount!

>Netflix: around $368M in additional tax paid – also manageable with $4.4B annual profit.

>Google: the tax change was minimal, because Google was voluntarily amortizing software development expenses for most staff, already. This was for all projects that reached “technological feasibility,” which is a milestone products pass before public release.

Trump's new tax bill is fixing what was broken in his last tax bill (Or maybe the punishment is being removed from tech companies that were perceived as against him in the first administration that have now bent the knee).

nfeutry · 9h ago
"Big Beautiful Bill" , is this a real law name ? USA friends, are you OK ?
jbverschoor · 8h ago
Sorry, my bad... it's "The One, Big, Beautiful Bill"
coolcase · 8h ago
It's full of "Illegal Immigrants" this and "Make America $superlative Again" that
drstewart · 6h ago
Well there isn't an active warzone on the continent unlike some other places I can name, so yeah, I think I know which one I'd prefer
codingdave · 2h ago
Australia is the only continent without armed conflict: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...
zelda420 · 5h ago
Unfortunately the GOP is very excited at the prospect of sending soldiers, drones, and arms to participate in the Mexico cartel wars… and let’s not even talk about school shootings.
aynyc · 5h ago
It’s just another tax cheap code. You won’t see significant change to hiring unless existing management thinking changes
scarface_74 · 8h ago
Everyone is trying to find any glimmer of hope for a software development recovery. It ain’t happening, there is way too much of a glut, BigTech has learned to operate leaner and VC funding isn’t coming back since the public market doesn’t want money losing startups and acquisitions are at a much lower valuation. The tax law won’t change that.

Not to mention that the entire US economy is now at the whims of ChatGPT - where the current admiration got its tariff policy from.

https://www.theverge.com/news/642620/trump-tariffs-formula-a...