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Comment by imchillyb | Hacker News Reader

R&D is a cost center that can no longer be written off of a company’s taxes.

I don’t believe that cost centers are a good example of returning manufacturing onshore. Or an example of a state using federal funding well.

Cost centers are not a good investment for federal funding, without a clear path to paying back our taxed dollars.

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This entire post is so wrong, it is difficult to know where to start. The first sentence about taxes is wrong. The second statement is an entirely unsupported opinion. The final statement miscategorized "cost centers" as some sort of federal investment? As for "clear path", the road US exceptionalism is paved with the gold derived from sensible investments in R&D and tech advancement. There was no clear path to paying back our investment in the federal highway system, but it did pay back indeed. There was no clear path to paying back our investments in basic physics, chemistry, and biology, but it did pay back indeed.

> R&D is a cost center that can no longer be written off of a company’s taxes.

Can you elaborate on this? It was my understanding a company only pays taxes on profit. So isn't the revenue that goes into R&D effectively taxed at 0%, since at that point it's not yet profit? I.e. only dividend payouts get taxed.

2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made it less beneficial to use R&D for tax credits because they had to be amortized over five years. Not good when you're an MBA looking to financially engineer your way into a fat bonus.

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