[atxtechbro]

Signed. As a US-based developer, I fully support restoring the deductibility of software development expenses. This policy change quietly gutted countless startups and engineering teams—it’s long past time we fix it.

Appreciate YC and folks like @itsluther pushing this forward. This isn’t just a tax issue—it’s about keeping innovation and talent thriving in the US. Let’s get it done.

[arrowsmith]

[flagged]

[smilliken]

The em dash was in popular use long before chatgpt. It's a useful grammatical symbol and a short dash is not a good substitute. Consider whether you'd use it if it was a dedicated key on your keyboard, if so then it's worth the small inconvenience to learn how to type it.

[arrowsmith]

Not just the em dash, the whole post stinks of ChatGPT, and there are two other obvious tells in the sentence I quoted.

If you know you know.

[smilliken]

Fair enough. I'm sensitive about the em dash being used as a tell, which I've seen mentioned once or twice, because I don't want people to dumb down punctuation to avoid being confused for an LLM. I'd guess it's a temporary issue until the LLMs get so good at blending in that we can't tell anymore.

[andrewlgood]

That is actually why software development was allowed to be expensed prior to 2017 - to keep innovation thriving in the US. In 2017, they US simply stopped giving preferential treatment to R&D.

[atxtechbro]

Why does it matter? In a little while this will stop being a question people will ask. If anything it shows I put value into a high quality comment, that shows effort, and I also hand signed the letter form.

I guess the point about how hard it is to manually type that character is a great point though, I appreciate that!