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How is an HR person writing a script to do their HR work better considered an R&D expense?
by Dig1t 1y ago
How is an HR person writing a script to do their HR work better considered an R&D expense?
- anigbrowl 1y agoScripted automation is quite literally development of IP. It's an asset that belongs to the company and will be counted as such on its balance sheet.
- sitkack 1y agoAnytime someone has a good idea, it should be depreciated over 5 years? Why is software special? It is all just the composition of simple machines.
- anigbrowl 1y agoI'm pretty sure it's because other industries wondered why they were having to spread such costs over 5 years while software firms were able to write them all down at once. It's not that I have a strong opinion about this either way (I'm not running or employed in a business where this matters), but that ultimately this is a philosophical argument. There isn't an objectively correct way to do this, how you view it is down to what your economic interests happen to be.
- tsimionescu 1y agoIt's the other way around. Software used to be special, in that money the company spent to improve its internal processes by, say, buying a calculator had to be amortized, while money spent on developing software automation were not.
- HPsquared 1y agoWhat if they literally just write a post-it note of how to perform certain actions? Are those 5 minutes capital investment? The information on that scrap of paper is subject to copyright and is a company asset in just the same way as a script. Where do they draw the line?