I'm objecting to the use of the term 'liability' because in accounting/finance in particular, a liability is strongly implied to be a net negative once you weigh all the benefits and costs together.

Here you're saying code is a liability because it has costs. But a car or a house have costs, yet they're almost always classified as assets, because the benefits outweigh the costs.

So you're left with a few choices:

1. Accept that code isn't always a liability, at least according to the dictionary definition of the word

2. Argue your way somehow to code nearly always being a net cost (seems unlikely, otherwise why write code?).

3. Redefine the meaning liability for this particular application

I think 1) is the most reasonable choice here.