[ethbr1]

I am not an accountant, but there wouldn't be a requirement to keep the employees.

If you spent $100M on developer salaries in FY2022, you'd create an amortization for that over the next 5 years.

And then in FY2023... even if you had fired your entire software department... you'd still get to claim that year's portion of that previously created amortization.

[hodgesrm]

That's correct as I understand the tax law. The credit carries over because it's depreciating the capital investment. Net operating losses (NOLs) work in a similar fashion. You get them as a credit in later tax years.

IANAL but have filed corporate taxes many times.

[thinkerswell]

Yes because normally, without this absurd law, you’d just deduct employee salaries from your taxable income.

[dathinab]

yes, I didn't try to say there is an requirement to keep them the writeoffs are base on what they are assumed to have produced not them being there so they would go one

but when keeping a job position (not necessary the same person tho) through overlapping writeoffs it will lead to a consistent 100% writeoff

not doing so can lead to spkies of little writeoff when increasing company size and the opposite when shrinking it. This would make new hires on a limited budged harder and in turn should motivate more long term planing when it comes to head count and that might lead to less head count fluctuations maybe

[bruce511]

Yep, it incentivizes getting rid of software staff as soon as you can after they complete the work. It makes downsizing especially profitable in the short term.