OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

> Foreign R&D must still be amortized over 15 years

Awesome, this literally could not be better for American tech workers.

So payroll for R&D is now entirely tax deductible? Businesses get to choose to pay taxes or do R&D for themselves?

There's also H-1B (and other worker visa) restrictions/costs imposed. Overall, quite good for the American tech worker

Either scenario taxes are paid - it’s just how and over what time period.

Source?

I don't see anything supporting this in the text of OBBB, nor in the definition of domestic research expense (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-regs/research_credit_basic_sec41...). Where did you see this?

Edit: Oh you mean costs in general, not in the context of section 147

It’s more about whether or not the company has taxable profits for that year (importantly these are not the same as real profits). I would read this article to understand more about how being forced to amortize tax deductions for expenses affects a business’s taxes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44180533

more info here too

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44226145

Extra $250 fee for visa applications: https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/big-beautif...

3.5% remittance fees on sending money out of the US: https://www.globalimmigrationblog.com/2025/06/what-are-the-i...

Also (in above source), no ACA subsidies for H-1B visa holders (and others), which likely means employers they will have to pay more for health care if they want to cover their immigrant workers

Tax deductible is a weird way of phrasing it. It's not like these software companies were counting their money at the end of the quarter, and then deciding to do R&D instead of paying taxes. They had already paid R&D expenses to build the product, which gained them revenue. Previously they weren't allowed to actualize the cost of R&D all at once, so the business could be losing money, and still have to pay taxes on top of the loss (which is nuts).

This fixes the problem, so now if you spend $100 on software developers, and you make $100 from the software, then you have $0 income, instead of $80 income.

In the long run, we are all dead. 20% depreciation per year for any software developed is a burden for all but the largest of companies.

It was also weird because people pay money on income (dividend, partner payment, SCorp share, etc.) anyway, so in a long term view this incentivized companies to keep fewer software engineers on staff.

Quoting all the fees in https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/big-beautif...

> Expansion of Immigration Fees:

> $1,000 asylum application fee — first in U.S. history

> $1,000 fee for individuals paroled into the U.S.

> $3,500 fee for sponsors of unaccompanied children

> $5,000 fee for sponsors of unaccompanied children who fail to appear in court

> $550 fee for work permits

> $500 application fee for Temporary Protected Status (TPS)

> $400 fee to file a diversity immigrant visa application

> $250 fee to register for the Diversity Visa Lottery

> $250 visa integrity fee

> $100 year fee while asylum applications remain pending

> $100 fee for continuances granted in immigration court

> $5,000 fee for individuals ordered removed in absentia

> $1,500 fee to adjust status to lawful permanent resident (green card)

> $1,050 fee for inadmissibility waivers

> $900 fee to appeal a decision by an immigration judge

> $900 fee to appeal a decision by DHS

> $1,325 fee to appeal in practitioner disciplinary cases

> $900 fee to file motions to reopen or reconsider

> $600 application fee for suspension of deportation

> $600 application fee for cancellation of removal (permanent residents)

> $1,500 application fee for cancellation of removal (non-permanent residents)

> $30 fee for Form I-94 (arrival/departure record), up from $6

Meh.

If you hire H-1B you should be required to pay a fee greater than it costs to educate an equivalent American. Otherwise you're always in the situation where you have to hire foreigners because no Americans are trained. (or in reality you hire foreigners because they're cheaper for the same role which this no longer makes it the case)

Yes, but why the domestic r&d must be amortized only within 5 years? One way it is harder for finance to deduct all the expense within 1 year or they have to amortize only within 5 years. In case of foreign r&d expenses though they cannot detect in the year they incur but they have 15 years amortize. So I don't get the benefit of. In fact if they haven't touched this it could have been much better. In tcja they made it worse. And they fix it partially by making it deductible within the year they incur for domestic r&d. But the amortization still kills it.

NJ, home of the H1B scam. I worked with these guys at some large corporations on contract and as an employeed (F500 companies). I felt bad for them. Modern serfs. They lived in housing owned by you know the names of these indian firms that do 'anything'. Companies love the low cost, unlimited hours, and no need to hire, they're contractors. they sign deals with big indian vendors to provide everythingunderthesun.

Poor dudes are like ' this is my chance to make it in America' and the high caste indian management treats them like dirt.

The 'old boomers yelling at young people' is a myth in professional America compared to the absolute screaming insults you'd hear hurled at these guys.

And if they messed up? boom, gone, next guy flown in.

The $100/year fee while an asylum case is pending means that the government is charging someone for the government's own inability to process cases quickly.

This matched capex software.

Weird how the depreciation schedule changes based on how the software was acquired.

The House's[1] SEC. 112104. EXCISE TAX ON REMITTANCE TRANSFERS. 3.5% tax became 1% in the Senate's[2] SEC. 70604. EXCISE TAX ON CERTAIN REMITTANCE TRANSFERS and a lot of the language changed.

The Senate made a lot of changes (Byrd rule also nuked a lot of stuff) so old articles are of limited use to the final bill.

I don't even know if [2] is the actual final text as there is neither an enrolled or public law version on congress.gov yet.

It's super annoying how often we can't read the final text of a bill before Congress votes on it.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/te...

[2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/te...

IDK, sounds like it's a bunch of stupid misc. fees. So instead of just raising the minimum wage for H1Bs and indexing it to inflation, they raise taxes (and these taxes on H1Bs don't seem like a consequential funding source. They might even bring in less tax revenue than raising the H1B minimum wage to where it should be if it had originally been indexed to inflation.)

> 3.5% remittance fees on sending money out of the US:

The version of the bill that passed a 1% excise is applicable "only to any remittance transfer for which the sender provides cash, a money order, a cashier’s check, or any other similar physical instrument".

You might look at the rest of the bill.

Huh? Eliminating h1bs tracks better with what's going on.

Sounds like a CRIME to me.

Sure, foreign R&D still gets amortized over 15 years (NPV ≈59 % of a full write-off, so you “lose” ~8.6 % of your R&D spend in present-value terms, and only 6.7 % of the cost is deductible in year 1, creating a 19.6 % cash-tax gap).

But offshore wages are often 50–70 % below U.S. rates:

• Even after the slower amortization drag, hiring at half the cost nets you ~30 % total savings on R&D headcount.

• On a pure cash basis you only need ~20 % lower wages to break even; most offshore markets easily exceed that.

• So the labor-cost arbitrage far outweighs the tax timing penalty unless your foreign salaries are less than ~20 % below U.S. levels.

In short: the 15-year amort rule hurts your tax deduction, but 50 %+ lower offshore wages more than make up for it.

>raising the minimum wage for H1Bs and indexing it to inflation

Huh? Not even regular minimum wage is indexed to inflation. What are you talking about?