17 ms·

It's not really targeted at tech, insomuch as at Democrats. Everyone assumed it was a traditional accounting hack. But given the timing and the reinitializatio

• victoro 1y ago
  The Democrats had control of the presidency and the house in 2022 when this provision first went into effect but had 2 fewer senators (1 fewer if you count the tie-breaking VP). Why didn't they try to change it? Is there some reason a change in the tax code like this can't be modified or repealed once its in place?
  • tomrod 1y ago
    They tried. They had Senate spoilers.
    • candiddevmike 1y ago
      As a progressive, it seems like the Democrats always have Senate spoilers...
      • SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
        Providing spoilers was the explicitly designed purpose of the US Senate. It's not a one-sided problem - Senate spoilers are also why the Affordable Care Act didn't get repealed in 2017.
        • tomrod 1y ago
          Explicitly?
          • glompers 1y ago
            US Senator was an office initially designed to be selected by state legislatures rather than by direct popular election like the representatives. To a populist or a party boss, that might count as a spoiler to the will of the people or to the will of those in DC, or to both. But I may misinterpret GP's point.
            • mayneack 1y ago
              I assume the person you're replying to is talking about the Filibuster and supermajority requirements not the direct election history. The filibuster is a senate rule not a constitutional design, so it wasn't part of the "design". Maybe they're both different ways of adding veto points to the same effect, but I think spoilers as "explicit design" is probably not how I'd describe it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_States_Senate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_State...
          • dboreham 1y ago
            Not parent but the founders were like folks writing smart contract code, thinking about various exploits and vulnerabilities (that might reduce the wealth of their class) so many of the seemingly dysfunctional elements of the system turn out to be designed deliberately to be dysfunctional. Feature not bug.
            • wvenable 1y ago
              They were not thinking about various exploits and vulnerabilities but rather making whatever compromises were necessary in order to form the union. It was negotiation, not planning.
              • b112 1y ago
      • dragonwriter 1y ago
        > As a progressive, it seems like the Democrats always have Senate spoilers... With Republicans usually being dominant in a number of states, if Democrats have a Senate majority, it is usually both narrow and dependent on a very small number of Democratic and/or Dem-leading moderate independent Senators from Republican-majority states who vote with the party on leadership, but are soft (or firmly opposed to the progressive preference) on a number of issues important to progressives. If the US were approximately an equal democracy, this might be less of an issue.
        • tomrod 1y ago
          Hell, just first past the post would eviscerate the current parties.
          • tomrod 1y ago
            Argh. Too late to edit. Something else outside first past the post* like ranked choice voting.
            • Filligree 1y ago
              Which is why they’ll never vote for it. Such changes are remarkable rare. :(
        • rayiner 1y ago
          > If the US were approximately an equal democracy, this might be less of an issue Equal to what?
          • paulryanrogers 1y ago
            Equal in voting rights. Gerrymandering has been perfected by Republicans. Through that they manage to dilute votes of the opposition. Other measures discourage voters likely to vote against them, like people who cannot easily take time off to vote in person or who have changed their name. Blocking rank choice and maintaining first past the post also disenfranchise third parties, and reinforces the power of incumbents. Trump himself admitted it's better for Republicans when fewer people vote.
      • kenjackson 1y ago
        But this is the type of thing that progressives would like support (tax big corporate America).
        • bloppe 1y ago
          This tax is far more consequential for small companies than for large ones. It probably actually benefits larger companies because it hobbles competition.
        • rezonant 1y ago
          No, this is a misunderstanding of the kind of taxation policy progressives tend to favor. Taxation on profit for businesses should be high, and taxation on upper tiers of individual income should be high, but taxation on funds businesses use to reinvest should be exempted or deductable. Basically the taxation we had in place after WW2 and on, with a steep corporate tax rate and more or less a maximum income for individuals. The R&D exemption removed in the 2017 bill, and discussed in the article, is key to that, because it encourages corporations to reinvest their income in building new products and paying workers rather than taking it directly as profit-- after all, at least they could reap the rewards (in growth and revenue) of the R&D later, instead of just giving the money to the government as taxes.
          • rayiner 1y ago
            I don’t think most progressives think about it in that detail. Raise taxes on the rich tech companies that are gentrifying san francisco.
            • dgb23 1y ago
              I‘m not American but the above description of a tax policy is what I hear a lot from progressives in media.
            • stahtops 1y ago
              At first glance I support ... "social and economic equality" and "reforms to improve human conditions, combat corruption, and reduce inequality". Am I progressive? If you ask me "should corporations pay more taxes?" I will say, yes. Famously so does Warren Buffet, is he also a progressive? If you ask me, "hey should we gut tax incentives for R&D spending in the USA?" I will say, uhhh no? probably a bad choice?
      • Braxton1980 1y ago
        And get blamed for it. If every single Republican and two Democrats vote against something guess who people blame?
      • cma 1y ago
        Both parties tend to when there is a narrow majority, e.g. McCain thumbs downing at the repeal of the ACA.
  • naijaboiler 1y ago
    Why should they? Why did we allow a president to put in tax raise for the future. Replicants were playing politics from the start. Pass a bad bill, and then hope to get about it when the bad parts kick in when the other side woo be in power
  • vineyardmike 1y ago
    Politics are complicated. Generally, in tax bills they try to keep them "neutral" where any tax cuts or tax breaks are coupled with tax increases elsewhere BUT they tend to report the 10-year affect for whatever reason. This bill provided a ~30% cut in corporate tax on profits, with a delayed increase in tax cost on Software R&D pushed to the next term. If the next party wants to reverse it, they'd have to find the money with an increase in tax - directly undoing it would be a ~50% increase in corporate tax rate, which (I guess?) would be a tough sell politically. Meanwhile, the tax code on software engineering sounds too niche to expend political capital on. Either way, its another example of how corporate America is trading long-term growth (R&D, product development) for short term gain (lower taxes today).
• _heimdall 1y ago
  If this was passed in 2017 to go into effect during the next presidential term, wouldn't that only work as a time bomb for Biden's presidency if Trump didn't expect to win a second consecutive term? Given the history of prior presidents winning 2 consecutive terms, it seems like Trump could have reasonably expected a 2022/2023 tax change to be his problem.
  • kenjackson 1y ago
    No. It’s after re-election. Bad news late in your second term isn’t that big of a deal, unless you care about legacy.
    • _heimdall 1y ago
      Most presidents care about legacy, at least to me it seems like trump holds that as a higher priority than most.
      • paulryanrogers 1y ago
        Trump seems to care what people think today, every day. He doesn't seem like someone who puts a lot of thought into the future.
        • b112 1y ago
          You know, I wonder if that's a sad but valuable trait for a politician. Public opinion can change daily, and external events can appear with no warning. These things can make a prior path of action vanish, or even make it madness to pursue. If you try to plan everything long term, I bet you hit a lot of disappoint as a politician. If you only see today, then you're not fighting for things that are now not possible. I imagine one would be far less stressed as a result. And maybe more popular than otherwise.
          • paulryanrogers 1y ago
            Some problems require years or even decades to address. Consider how quickly a COVID vaccine was developed, yet it depended upon many years of quietly studying SARS and R&D around MRNA. Or consider trying to address developing or maintaining infrastructure. A chaotic politican whose mind is changed by the last person they spoke with won't do well facing serious long term problems. It gets worse if the only things they consistently stand for is their own power, personal wealth, their sycophants, and their grade-school-level (mis)understanding of complex matters.
• efitz 1y ago
  This is just wrong. It was passed in 2017 (during Trump’s presidency). It was to go into effect in 2020 (a presidential election year during Trump’s presidency). He hoped to be re-elected.
  • demosthanos 1y ago
    No. It went into effect in 2022 [0], which means the timeline absolutely does track with OP's theory. That gives a hypothetical Trump term 2 a full year to fix it but also imposes enough of a time crunch that they could plan on sabotaging attempts to fix it by another party. I'm not saying it's the actual story, but the timeline does track. [0] Page 60, Sec 1306(e) sets the date: https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/hr1/BILLS-115hr1enr.pdf https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/hr1/BILLS-115hr1enr.pdf
    • efitz 1y ago
      I don’t think it really changes the narrative. 2020 was also a congressional election year, even had Trump won (as he appeared to want desperately) he could not have been assured of a Republican congress. My argument is simple: Occam’s Razor The Republicans in congress put the provision in solely as a gimmick to get past the CBO. Frankly I don’t think legislators in either party are competent enough to have foreseen the consequences and even if they had been they wouldn’t have put a bomb like this in that would be more likely than not to backfire and affect them. I just think that too often people interpret incompetence as malice, especially nowadays when things are so polarized that it’s fashionable to hate people who differ with one’s political opinions.
      • throwaway173738 1y ago
        I think you’re wrong that legislators are incompetent. They’re human, and they’ve spent much of their lives learning how to get votes, but they’re not incompetent. A lot of them aren’t malicious, but there seems to be a small group of people outside of the legislative branch who are hell bent on taking control at all costs. And if you want to keep the votes rolling in you have to work with those people or get primaried. The dysfunction follows from fear more than incompetence these days.