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Then how did Republicans repeal it just recently with zero Dem votes? Repealing it had Republican support during the Biden term too, they even introduced a bi

Then how did Republicans repeal it just recently with zero Dem votes? Repealing it had Republican support during the Biden term too, they even introduced a bill in2023 to repeal it which the Democrats killed. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/2823 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/282... Democrats really wanted the changes to take place since their platform is all about higher taxes on companies and high earners.

rezonant 1y ago
> which the Democrats killed Do you have a source for this claim? The congressional record says only that it died in the Finance Committee
- ivewonyoung 1y ago
  Democrats controlled both the Finance Committee and the Senate. There was no way for Republicans to stop a bill from coming to vote. So it was necessarily stopped from moving ahead by Democrats despite Republican support. Another reason for the party in power blocking the vote would if the President opposed it, to prevent the scenario of Biden having to veto. Edit: Blocked from being able to post new comments by HN because I am getting heavily downvoted for posting inconvenient facts and arguments. Stay classy, HN.
  - rezonant 1y ago
    So that would be this Finance committee right? > The Senate Finance Committee roster for the 118th Congress includes 14 Democrats and 13 Republicans, with three new GOP members recently appointed. > https://tax.thomsonreuters.com/news/senate-finance-finalizes-roster-with-three-new-republicans/ https://tax.thomsonreuters.com/news/senate-finance-finalizes... Hardly an unbeatable majority for Democrats on this committee. Especially since research and development is one of the main reasons taxation on higher income classes is effective: The idea is you'll be taxed if you want to take it as profit, but if you advance the state of the art, innovate, or create new technology then you can deduct that. The high tax rates of the US post WWII up to Reagan worked so well because of this combination: It was incentivized for businesses to reinvest their profits into R&D, since they'd hopefully be able to scale their profits if the R&D was successful. I think it's not as clear cut as "the Democrats" or "the Republicans" here-- especially since there would probably be a requirement that the shortfall be made up in some other way in order to balance the effects on revenue.
    - ripjaygn 1y ago
      > I think it's not as clear cut as "the Democrats" or "the Republicans" here-- especially since there would probably be a requirement that the shortfall be made up in some other way in order to balance the effects on revenue For the 10th time in this thread, the repealing bill DID NOT need to be revenue neutral since it had Republican support, all it needed was 60 votes in the Senate. Reconciliation only applies if a yearly budget bill can get at least 51 votes but not 60. Sorry, I feel like I am taking crazy pills. I stated the same in another comment and was downvoted. I know HN is liberal biased but it's becoming unusable if you as much dare to criticize democrats.
      - rezonant 1y ago
        No need to repeat yourself. Why are you getting so worked up? I think we'd all like to understand what the hold up was on these bills, but let's base that in supported facts, not partisanship. As stated above, it was 14 to 13 by party lines in this committee, and that's a negligible difference.
        ripjaygn 1y ago
        Two bills were passed with zero Republican votes in 2021 and 2022 by Democrats, the repeal could've been included in either if democrats wanted. > As stated above, it was 14 to 13 by party lines in this committee, and that's a negligible difference There were only 27 members in the committee. So all the Democrats on the committee voted against the repeal and all the republicans voted for the repeal. How is that a negligible difference? That's a massive maximum difference between the parties, in fact it was impossible to have a higher difference.
        rezonant 1y ago
        Do you have the voting records of this bill in committee? Of course there were 27 members, that's the sum of the Democrats and Republicans. That does not mean that they voted on party lines in committee.
      - 1y ago
  - mikeyouse 1y ago
    Crapo, Republican Senator from Idaho killed the bill because he was pretending to care about deficits back then: https://www.taxnotes.com/featured-news/crapo-criticizes-attempts-dismiss-gop-concerns-tax-bill/2024/02/29/7j87g https://www.taxnotes.com/featured-news/crapo-criticizes-atte... Needless to say, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the BBB’s ~$4 trillion debt increase.
    - rezonant 1y ago
      That is a different bill which also restored R&E. While it is a different bill, the fact the Democrats were fine having it in the bill passed by the House in 2024 does cast doubt on this notion that they didn't try to resolve the issue.
  - tomhow 1y ago
    > Blocked from being able to post new comments by HN because I am getting heavily downvoted for posting inconvenient facts This is not how HN works. Rate-limiting only happens when an account posts high volumes of comments that break the guidelines. It's nothing to do with downvotes or the political/idological flavor of what you post (we don't care and often don't know; all we care about is whether you're filling up threads with guideline-breaking comments, which is what ruins threads). If you want rate-limiting turned off you can email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we can discuss it.
    - immibis 1y ago
      This can't be correct, since the system can't detect when comments break the guidelines. It's either based on flags or downvotes, or perhaps just total number of comments. It's definitely not based on karma, since I'm rate-limited. Another possibility is that it triggers when a moderator gets pissed at a single one of your comments.
      - tomhow 1y ago
        I'm late coming back to this, but for the record: The rate-limiter is applied manually when we notice that an account is posting a high volume of guidelines-breaking comments. The way we notice is by reading the threads, which we spend much of each day doing, or when we're alerted to guidelines-breaking comments by flags or by community members emailing us.
apical_dendrite 1y ago
There are special rules called reconciliation that allow one party to pass a bill with just a majority. It can be used only once a year (hence why everything was packed into the big beautiful bill) and there are very complex and technical rules around what it can be used for. So to answer your question, Republicans repealed it with zero Democratic votes because they included it in the once-a-year reconciliation bill. The bill that you are linking to would not have met this criteria.
- ripjaygn 1y ago
  It had Republican support so it would've gotten the 60 votes in Senate without needing to get reconciliation. It didn't even get a vote because the Democrats stopped it from proceeding with their control of the Senate. Their policy is all about higher taxes on corporation and high income individuals so it tracks.
  - dragon-hn 1y ago
    > It had Republican support so it would've gotten the 60 votes in Senate without needing to get reconciliation That is a bit of a jump. It wasn’t too long ago we had the Republicans vote against their own bill.
    - ivewonyoung 1y ago
      > That is a bit of a jump. It wasn’t too long ago we had the Republicans vote against their own bill. There was no way for the Republicans to stop a bill from coming to vote. And there were multiple republican co-sponsors or even bills introduced by them to repeal the provisions. It didn't even get to a vote because the dems killed the efforts. They like higher corporate taxes so it tracks, they didn't care about the damage caused. Once the Repulicans were able to repeal it on their own, they immediately did it ASAP.
seangrogg 1y ago
They actually did NOT repeal the portion relevant to software development being considered research - it was actually made permanent and is pretty trivial to find by searching for "software development" against the text of the bill. What did change was an additional section to how research is capitalized, with domestic research being able to deduct immediately while other (i.e. foreign) research is subject to the amortization rules.

rezonant 1y ago

> which the Democrats killed Do you have a source for this claim? The congressional record says only that it died in the Finance Committee

ivewonyoung 1y ago
Democrats controlled both the Finance Committee and the Senate. There was no way for Republicans to stop a bill from coming to vote. So it was necessarily stopped from moving ahead by Democrats despite Republican support. Another reason for the party in power blocking the vote would if the President opposed it, to prevent the scenario of Biden having to veto. Edit: Blocked from being able to post new comments by HN because I am getting heavily downvoted for posting inconvenient facts and arguments. Stay classy, HN.
- rezonant 1y ago
  So that would be this Finance committee right? > The Senate Finance Committee roster for the 118th Congress includes 14 Democrats and 13 Republicans, with three new GOP members recently appointed. > https://tax.thomsonreuters.com/news/senate-finance-finalizes-roster-with-three-new-republicans/ https://tax.thomsonreuters.com/news/senate-finance-finalizes... Hardly an unbeatable majority for Democrats on this committee. Especially since research and development is one of the main reasons taxation on higher income classes is effective: The idea is you'll be taxed if you want to take it as profit, but if you advance the state of the art, innovate, or create new technology then you can deduct that. The high tax rates of the US post WWII up to Reagan worked so well because of this combination: It was incentivized for businesses to reinvest their profits into R&D, since they'd hopefully be able to scale their profits if the R&D was successful. I think it's not as clear cut as "the Democrats" or "the Republicans" here-- especially since there would probably be a requirement that the shortfall be made up in some other way in order to balance the effects on revenue.
  - ripjaygn 1y ago
    > I think it's not as clear cut as "the Democrats" or "the Republicans" here-- especially since there would probably be a requirement that the shortfall be made up in some other way in order to balance the effects on revenue For the 10th time in this thread, the repealing bill DID NOT need to be revenue neutral since it had Republican support, all it needed was 60 votes in the Senate. Reconciliation only applies if a yearly budget bill can get at least 51 votes but not 60. Sorry, I feel like I am taking crazy pills. I stated the same in another comment and was downvoted. I know HN is liberal biased but it's becoming unusable if you as much dare to criticize democrats.
    - rezonant 1y ago
      No need to repeat yourself. Why are you getting so worked up? I think we'd all like to understand what the hold up was on these bills, but let's base that in supported facts, not partisanship. As stated above, it was 14 to 13 by party lines in this committee, and that's a negligible difference.
      - ripjaygn 1y ago
        Two bills were passed with zero Republican votes in 2021 and 2022 by Democrats, the repeal could've been included in either if democrats wanted. > As stated above, it was 14 to 13 by party lines in this committee, and that's a negligible difference There were only 27 members in the committee. So all the Democrats on the committee voted against the repeal and all the republicans voted for the repeal. How is that a negligible difference? That's a massive maximum difference between the parties, in fact it was impossible to have a higher difference.
        rezonant 1y ago
        Do you have the voting records of this bill in committee? Of course there were 27 members, that's the sum of the Democrats and Republicans. That does not mean that they voted on party lines in committee.
    - 1y ago
- mikeyouse 1y ago
  Crapo, Republican Senator from Idaho killed the bill because he was pretending to care about deficits back then: https://www.taxnotes.com/featured-news/crapo-criticizes-attempts-dismiss-gop-concerns-tax-bill/2024/02/29/7j87g https://www.taxnotes.com/featured-news/crapo-criticizes-atte... Needless to say, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the BBB’s ~$4 trillion debt increase.
  - rezonant 1y ago
    That is a different bill which also restored R&E. While it is a different bill, the fact the Democrats were fine having it in the bill passed by the House in 2024 does cast doubt on this notion that they didn't try to resolve the issue.
- tomhow 1y ago
  > Blocked from being able to post new comments by HN because I am getting heavily downvoted for posting inconvenient facts This is not how HN works. Rate-limiting only happens when an account posts high volumes of comments that break the guidelines. It's nothing to do with downvotes or the political/idological flavor of what you post (we don't care and often don't know; all we care about is whether you're filling up threads with guideline-breaking comments, which is what ruins threads). If you want rate-limiting turned off you can email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we can discuss it.
  - immibis 1y ago
    This can't be correct, since the system can't detect when comments break the guidelines. It's either based on flags or downvotes, or perhaps just total number of comments. It's definitely not based on karma, since I'm rate-limited. Another possibility is that it triggers when a moderator gets pissed at a single one of your comments.
    - tomhow 1y ago
      I'm late coming back to this, but for the record: The rate-limiter is applied manually when we notice that an account is posting a high volume of guidelines-breaking comments. The way we notice is by reading the threads, which we spend much of each day doing, or when we're alerted to guidelines-breaking comments by flags or by community members emailing us.

apical_dendrite 1y ago

There are special rules called reconciliation that allow one party to pass a bill with just a majority. It can be used only once a year (hence why everything was packed into the big beautiful bill) and there are very complex and technical rules around what it can be used for. So to answer your question, Republicans repealed it with zero Democratic votes because they included it in the once-a-year reconciliation bill. The bill that you are linking to would not have met this criteria.

ripjaygn 1y ago
It had Republican support so it would've gotten the 60 votes in Senate without needing to get reconciliation. It didn't even get a vote because the Democrats stopped it from proceeding with their control of the Senate. Their policy is all about higher taxes on corporation and high income individuals so it tracks.
- dragon-hn 1y ago
  > It had Republican support so it would've gotten the 60 votes in Senate without needing to get reconciliation That is a bit of a jump. It wasn’t too long ago we had the Republicans vote against their own bill.
  - ivewonyoung 1y ago
    > That is a bit of a jump. It wasn’t too long ago we had the Republicans vote against their own bill. There was no way for the Republicans to stop a bill from coming to vote. And there were multiple republican co-sponsors or even bills introduced by them to repeal the provisions. It didn't even get to a vote because the dems killed the efforts. They like higher corporate taxes so it tracks, they didn't care about the damage caused. Once the Repulicans were able to repeal it on their own, they immediately did it ASAP.

seangrogg 1y ago

They actually did NOT repeal the portion relevant to software development being considered research - it was actually made permanent and is pretty trivial to find by searching for "software development" against the text of the bill. What did change was an additional section to how research is capitalized, with domestic research being able to deduct immediately while other (i.e. foreign) research is subject to the amortization rules.