Companies building software in the US were hit hard a few years ago when the tax code stopped allowing deduction of software dev expenses. Now they have to be amortized over several years.<p>HN has had many discussions about this, including <i>The time bomb in the tax code that's fueling mass tech layoffs</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44180533">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44180533</a> - (927 comments) a few days ago. Other threads are listed at <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44203869">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44203869</a>.<p>There's currently a major effort to get this change reversed. One of the people working on it is YC's Luther Lowe (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=itsluther">https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=itsluther</a>). Luther has been organizing YC alumni to urge lawmakers to support this reversal. I asked him if we could do that on Hacker News too. He said yes—hence this thread :)<p>If you're a US taxpayer and if you agree that software dev expenses should be deductible like they used to be, please sign this letter to the relevant committee members: <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1DkRGeef2e_tU2xf3TyEyd2JLlmZH8sGs6hhuVkokgpw/viewform?edit_requested=true" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1DkRGeef2e_tU2xf3TyEyd2JLlmZ...</a>.<p>(If you're not a US person, please don't sign the letter, since lawmakers will only listen to feedback from taxpayers and we don't want to dilute the signal.)<p>I'm sure not everyone here agrees with us—HN is a big community, there's no total agreement on anything—but this issue has as close to a community consensus as HN gets, so I think it makes sense to add our voices too.<p>Luther will be around to answer questions and hopefully HN can contribute to getting this done!