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I suspect its just a tax break related policy, ive been doing the same shit at US companies (still in EU), and some European companies (in EU) and the US one we
by lnxg33k1 3y ago
I suspect its just a tax break related policy, ive been doing the same shit at US companies (still in EU), and some European companies (in EU) and the US one were the only one asking me to file reports for hours classified as R&D, maybe european ones have no incentive to do that
Id say, considering that, and considering that for these corps taxes are lava, i’d go to look at incentives on taxes about R&D filing
- wharvle 3y agoCan confirm, filed some “R&D” hours at a company some years back that did software development but nothing I’d call “R&D”. They straight-up told us it was a requirement for some tax benefit or other. Like they did have us do it only on non-client work, but… it was not really R&D the way anyone means that.
- richbell 3y agoMy friend's company hires one of the big consulting firms every year to create a report of all their "innovative" research and development. It's both hilarious and disheartening how much of a tax grift it is.
- lttlrck 3y agoSame. R&D included anything that wasn't not finished or had a roadmap that extended beyond the end of the year. In other words: unproven. If you squint that is R&D.
- eru 3y agoThe D in R&D literally stands for development. So 'software development' would fit.
- Jensson 3y agoRight, software development, but not software maintenance. The issue is with companies filing maintenance under development, since both of those has the same "Software Engineer" title. In other industries there is usually a very clear separation between development and maintenance.
- eru 3y agoWell, software doesn't need any traditional maintenance. It doesn't wear out. Any maintenance is new development.
- rightbyte 3y agoIt is research and development. Not 'or', though. I mean I work in a RnD dep. now and it honestly is some R but like 2% of my time.
- eru 3y agoAre you suggesting that a company that only does Research but no development (eg because they are selling the patents afterwards or so), should not be classified as doing R&D? I took R&D as the bucket that we put both research and development into.
- PeterStuer 3y agoWhat is R, D or non of the above is a spectrum. Public funding and tax favoring regimes in the EU mostly use the TRL framework for classification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level
- ChadMoran 3y agoCapEx vs OpEx. CapEx can be written off.
- redandblack 3y agoThe department I got hired into my 1st job was called Corporate Research & Development, and reported to Finance
- nudgeee 3y agoI have the opposite experience, I’m based in NL. Of the 2 EU companies I worked for they both asked to fill timesheets. And of the 2 US companies I worked for (also based in NL), none asked for timesheets.
- gumballindie 3y agoBeen doing the same in the UK. Everything not BAU was R&D. Installed a new server package and configured it? R&D baby. Or so I was told, because you know, it’s new to the company ;) ;)
- rjh29 3y agoAlso UK and I know we devoted pretty serious manpower to tracking timesheets and writing up R&D reports of projects to get a tax deduction.
- nraynaud 3y agoFrance has a giant research tax break that is very wildly misused by corporations who put development in it. There are even service companies with “research centers” now. They simply bill employees without a client to the state for doing “research” that mostly consists in completing tutorials on the latest trendy technology at the HQ.
- acchow 3y agoSo instead of spending $0 on not having that employee, the company would rather hire than employee for $50k to get back $25k in tax savings? This doesn't seem like a profit-driven decision.
- lnxg33k1 3y agoThe thing is $25k of software production is left at the company, and when the employee is not needed anymore, then the collectivity has to pay for unemployment
- kthejoker2 3y agoThat $0 is on a day by day basis. "Riding the bench" in between project bookings is common, especially for junior consultants with limited skills. Bench / sub 100% utilization is one reason consultants cost so much.
- metaphor 3y ago> I suspect its just a tax break related policy 1. What publicly-traded companies report to investors and what they report to the IRS are more different than you might initially suspect. 2. This $73.2B figure was pulled directly from their 2022 10-K filing[1] under an ops expense line item labeled technology and content, which includes R&D and then some. The devil in the details is buried in a footnote on p. 26: >> Technology and content costs include payroll and related expenses for employees involved in the research and development of new and existing products and services, development, design, and maintenance of our stores, curation and display of products and services made available in our online stores, and infrastructure costs. Infrastructure costs include servers, networking equipment, and data center related depreciation and amortization, rent, utilities, and other expenses necessary to support AWS and other Amazon businesses. At face value, to handwave this figure as just R&D and purport that it's directly comparable to other publicly-traded companies who report disaggregated research and development strikes me as somewhere between shotgun analysis and hoodwinking. [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872423000004/amzn-20221231.htm#icc32c5c732854b7f9975929c57cd5bd4_97 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872423...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- PeterStuer 3y agoAt least for public funding (subsidies) EU companies are required to have full hourly accounting of time spent.