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336 points tareqak | 38 comments | | HN request time: 2.064s | source | bottom
1. tomrod ◴[] No.44469345[source]
If correct, this is a good thing on a generally bad, overstuffed bill. Immediate expensing never should have been changed in the first place, and it was always weird seeing people twist themselves in knots defending it.
replies(4): >>44469474 #>>44469476 #>>44469714 #>>44471311 #
2. xp84 ◴[] No.44469474[source]
It’s an overstuffed bill because nobody will compromise on anything so the only way to pass a bill that has anything even remotely controversial to either party is one reconciliation bill a year.
replies(3): >>44469494 #>>44469916 #>>44469965 #
3. earth2mars ◴[] No.44469476[source]
This. TCJA removed it and OBBBA restored it. What am I missing here
replies(2): >>44469490 #>>44469519 #
4. lesuorac ◴[] No.44469490[source]
It lets you claim BBB doesn't increase the budget by as much as it'll ultimately do.

By having a bunch of random provision in BBB that generate revenue it lowers it's impact on the defect and then you can repeal them later on after passing BBB.

5. dragonwriter ◴[] No.44469494[source]
> It’s an overstuffed bill because nobody will compromise on anything so the only way to pass a bill that has anything even remotely controversial to either party is one reconciliation bill a year.

No, and lots of controversial bills have passed other than as reconciliation bills, and especially so during trifectas where they "controversial" within the minority party but broadly supported by the majority; reconciliation is necessary to pass something that strains unity in the majority party and is uniformly opposed by (not "controversial to") the minority party, perhaps.

replies(2): >>44469550 #>>44469712 #
6. rhinoceraptor ◴[] No.44469519[source]
Classic 45-47 maneuver, first create a problem. Then solve it, often poorly and incompletely. Finally, claim victory, another 300 IQ 5D chess move in the books.
7. cheriot ◴[] No.44469550{3}[source]
In the last 10 years, have there been more than a handful of bills that got 60 votes in the senate?

I wouldn't like what the current congress would do without the filibuster, but at this point a paralyzed system might be worse.

replies(4): >>44469613 #>>44469632 #>>44469664 #>>44470156 #
8. apsec112 ◴[] No.44469613{4}[source]
"Despite Democrats holding thin majorities in both chambers during a period of intense political polarization, the 117th Congress (2021-2023) oversaw the passage of numerous significant bills, including the Inflation Reduction Act, American Rescue Plan Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Postal Service Reform Act, Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, CHIPS and Science Act, Honoring Our PACT Act, Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, and Respect for Marriage Act."

All of these except the first two were bipartisan and got 60 Senate votes (or more)

replies(2): >>44469638 #>>44469803 #
9. 9283409232 ◴[] No.44469632{4}[source]
The answer is to vote out politicians. Getting ranked choice voting on your states ballot would go a long way to fixing this. They would not have Mamdani on the ballot for NY mayor if it wasn't for ranked choice voting. Certain politicans know this and have made RCV illegal in their state. Get RCV on the ballot for your state.
replies(4): >>44469761 #>>44470041 #>>44470180 #>>44471146 #
10. a_wild_dandan ◴[] No.44469664{4}[source]
What does that matter? We're talking trifectas here, not supermajorities. The filibuster is a cute remnant of "decorum." It's a vestigial rule which will disappear when too inconvenient. (Fun question with not-so-fun answers: why isn't the filibuster gone already?)
replies(1): >>44470020 #
11. sugarpimpdorsey ◴[] No.44469712{3}[source]
The last time something like that happened was probably the Patriot Act.
replies(2): >>44469785 #>>44469796 #
12. mindslight ◴[] No.44469714[source]
Twisting not required. Depreciation straightforwardly applies to every other business capital expenditure. Hire someone to put a new roof on a rental property, and you're out the tens of thousands of dollars cash while only getting an immediate deduction for one thirtieth of the value. If you were expecting to pay that cash out of income, it's effectively a realized income and then reinvestment.

The recent (-ly undone) change went against decades of how things were, was crippling for medium size cashflow-positive startups, effectively increased taxes, etc. But it was really just a straightforward application of the general principles that apply to most everything else.

replies(2): >>44469790 #>>44471232 #
13. mindslight ◴[] No.44469761{5}[source]
RCV / Ranked Pairs of course. The IRV decision process is still a relic of the two party system, with the possibility for some pretty terrible strategic-voting dynamics as votes diverge from just two major parties.
14. Calavar ◴[] No.44469785{4}[source]
The 2024 Ukraine defense funding bill passed despite having < 50% support in the majority party in the House, and it was not part of a reconciliation.
15. djoldman ◴[] No.44469790[source]
?

This applied to salaries, it wasn't a capital expenditure as "capital expenditure" has traditionally been defined.

This was an operational expense.

replies(2): >>44469815 #>>44469822 #
16. rpiguy ◴[] No.44469796{4}[source]
Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was the most sweeping legislation ever passed via reconciliation.
replies(1): >>44469867 #
17. thomquaid ◴[] No.44469803{5}[source]
https://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/yearlycompari...

It does seem like things are trending toward less public laws passing over the last decade, as well as record low time in session and other congressional activity.

18. mindslight ◴[] No.44469815{3}[source]
Yes, salaries spent to build a capital asset. Half the cost of a new roof is paying salaries, right? And yet, you still depreciate the whole value of the completed thing, not just the cost of the input materials. If you hire the roofers yourself as employees, you're still supposed to be accounting this way - although obviously there are many ways to fudge it.

The point is that building a piece of software that is going to be in use for several+ years is creating an asset. It just goes against our intuition since this industry is so driven by fast fashion, and the bookkeeping of specific components, their depreciation schedules, early end of life, (etc) seems like needless complexity.

replies(2): >>44470057 #>>44470555 #
19. tomrod ◴[] No.44469822{3}[source]
While accurate, capex captures the building of things, like hiring a company (that pays salaries) to build a factory.
20. apsec112 ◴[] No.44469867{5}[source]
Obamacare was passed via regular order (60 Senate votes), not reconciliation. There was a follow-up package to tweak it that passed via reconciliation in 2010, but the original bill was regular order. It's the only (very brief) window where one party has held 60 Senate seats since 1977.
21. pfannkuchen ◴[] No.44469916[source]
It seems like a more formalized quid pro quo system is needed so that political favors can be split across bills and relied upon. This sort of thing seems to be human nature, it doesn’t help anyone to pretend in the procedural rules that it doesn’t happen.
replies(1): >>44470570 #
22. evan_ ◴[] No.44469932{7}[source]
“Thought terminating cliche” has become a thought terminating cliche.
replies(2): >>44470002 #>>44470492 #
23. onlyrealcuzzo ◴[] No.44469965[source]
Which is why we need to get rid of reconciliation and go back to actually needing to get compromise, but hell will freeze over twice before that happens.
24. ethbr1 ◴[] No.44470020{5}[source]
> (Fun question with not-so-fun answers: why isn't the filibuster gone already?)

Because both parties are scared eventually the other party will be back in the majority.

replies(1): >>44471671 #
25. ◴[] No.44470041{5}[source]
26. creato ◴[] No.44470057{4}[source]
At least 50% of time on every software team I've ever been on was spent on maintenance and fixing bugs.

You can expense such time as opex, but it has to be justified, and that's often difficult to do. Did you fix a bug by refactoring some code to avoid the problem? Is that capex or opex? Can you convince the IRS of such?

The old (and now new) rules eliminated this accounting game and uncertainty.

replies(1): >>44470184 #
27. margalabargala ◴[] No.44470156{4}[source]
Absolutely. Many bills in the Senate in that time have gotten over 90. Here's one that passed 95-2 that I picked at random.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/870...

A lot of what happens in Congress is obvious to do and everyone agrees. While the media certainly focuses on the handful of things the two parties are at odds over, most of the lawmaking done by Congress is not controversial between parties, and is simply passed, so we don't hear about it.

28. boroboro4 ◴[] No.44470180{5}[source]
Not important but Mamdani would’ve won without ranked choice voting too, it didn’t play a role in the end.
replies(1): >>44470369 #
29. mindslight ◴[] No.44470184{5}[source]
Sure. I get that having to facilitate accounting takes away from programming, and that nothing is cut in dry with the IRS. I'm not even a fan of the general idea of mandatory depreciation schedules, seeing depreciation as more of an artifact that fell out from double entry book keeping's proliferation of different types of accounts. My only point was that this is just the same regime that everything else has to deal with.

For example if you pay someone to fix a leaky roof and they replace a section of a given size, can you call it a repair/maintenance expense or should you be depreciating it as an improvement to the building? Can you convince the IRS of such? The only reason this has more straightforward answers is that accountants have been answering this question longer.

30. tialaramex ◴[] No.44470369{6}[source]
We can't know. Ranked choice changes how people vote.

In particular it gives people permission to vote for a candidate they like but don't expect to be able to win.

31. bmacho ◴[] No.44470396{7}[source]
Threads being over is a good thing, isn't it? Truth's been discovered, all parties agree, no more time spent on going in circles, can move on to do other, meaningful things, etc. Unless you are facebook, and you optimize on endless churn, stealing time and showing ads.

I haven't seen the original comment, but the wiki article is moronic. None of the listed example seems even bad to me, claiming that they are the devil is ridiculous. Maybe even a false flag.

The only one that actually has anything to do with "terminating cliche" is "Let's agree to disagree.". But that's just the common phrase you say after you've decided to opt out of an argument. It is not (and can't be) the cause of it, it is the consequence of it.* And it is by no means any bad, or should one avoid it.

* : something something people being able to easily leave an argument makes them do it more. But it would need a lot of stretch to argue that the possibility to go away from arguments is a net negative for humanity

edit: can we agree that the random shit you linked is 100% unrelated to the argument at hand, therefore/and definitely should not be used?

edit2: yeah, it assumes the truthness of some ridiculously nonsensical concepts, and uses them in a meta meta way, that is 2-3 steps away from the topic at hand. Much-much more annoying than anything listed. "This is the hill you want to die on, huh? Naah.. How about.." *points downwards* "..there is this hill there 14000 miles away (actually there is only ocean), how about we move this fight there?" Yeah no thx.

32. bmacho ◴[] No.44470492{8}[source]
Some billion times more than any of the listed sayings in the wiki page.
33. eastbound ◴[] No.44470555{4}[source]
The debate is the duration of the capex in software. The law will oscillate between “Software lasts 15 years!” and “basically throw-away”.

At this moment, the law came back to 1-year deprecation.

34. disgruntledphd2 ◴[] No.44470570{3}[source]
This was called pork when it used to happen and people were very angry about it.
35. AnthonyMouse ◴[] No.44471146{5}[source]
Score voting (or STAR) is better.
36. AnthonyMouse ◴[] No.44471232[source]
> The recent (-ly undone) change went against decades of how things were, was crippling for medium size cashflow-positive startups, effectively increased taxes, etc. But it was really just a straightforward application of the general principles that apply to most everything else.

The error was in reconciling them by getting rid of it for software R&D instead of allowing other business expenses to be deducted when they're paid for as well.

For large stable incumbents that have the same expenses every year, the difference doesn't matter except in the first years after you make the change, because it doesn't matter if you deduct all of this year's expense this year or 5% of each of the last 20 years' expenses this year, they add up to the same deduction every year.

Where it matters is for new challengers, because they don't have arbitrarily many years worth of legacy expenses to deduct, so their deduction in their first year will be less than their incumbent competitor's.

It also creates a disincentive (or competitive disadvantage) to increase long-term investments. If some existing company had been making a $5M investment every year but is now facing new foreign competition and needs to increase it to $10M in order to stay competitive, they're in the same position as the upstart. Moreover, then they may not be able to do it, because they were going to have to run lean and divert the $5M profit they usually make to increasing their capital investments, but then the government is expecting tax on most of that $5M which means they can't spend it this year it even though it's ultimately a deduction.

Notice what this does specifically in the case of real estate: If rents start going up the normal incentive is to build new housing, but now you have to put out all the money to build a new building in year 0 and not get to deduct it for decades. Is that the incentive we want? Probably not.

37. tossandthrow ◴[] No.44471311[source]
> Immediate expensing never should have been changed in the first place

This is indicative of ignorance. There is a reason why we have these rules.

38. actionfromafar ◴[] No.44471671{6}[source]
So it seems like a good canary? If it’s removed, the ruling party is no longer afraid it will be ever removed from power.