alt Hacker Newsiirc some companies (google?) had been doing that before section 174 anyway. (which is why it imo isn't super convincing to tie layoffs with section 174 rather than e.g. end of zirp)
ok I read it in https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/section-174/ "Google: the tax change was minimal, because Google was voluntarily amortizing software development expenses for most staff, already."
But why though? That post seems to leave it at
> After five years, there can even be tax benefits to this kind of accounting.
without actually explaining what those benefits are. I'm genuinely curious why one would choose to amortize.