Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)

Re:Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev ... by NoMoreNicksLeft on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @11:55AM (#44238353)

A minute or two (or even 10 minutes) per month is basically just guessing/bullshitting. Anything that is accurate rather than imagination requires more overhead than this. Likely anything even remotely accurate requires the sort of micromanagement software that lawyers use to track billable hours, requires desktop-surveillance, and meeting minutes-dissection after-the-fact. Not sure how they will decide to rate reddit doomscrolling when tax season rolls around either, which if we're honest, is some significant fraction of our in-office hours (hell, strangely, some of that time is when I figure out the tricky stuff).

So no, "just" is hardly fair.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev ... by Dylan16807 on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @03:31PM (#44240504)

> A minute or two (or even 10 minutes) per month is basically just guessing/bullshitting.

Correct, they are suggesting basically just guessing.

Which is why "just" is correct for their suggestion.

It's not a good suggestion but it really is that easy to implement.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev ... by Muromec on Wednesday June 11, 2025 @04:44AM (#44245512)

Government wants a number -- they get a number. How I get to the number is precise enough in my opinion and you are free to disagree with my methodology.

When I was doing it, I worked in an actual startup and granularity of time allocation was in weeks. This week I was doing the thing, the other I was mostly doing bugfixes/refactorings etc.

You could do more precise and account with hour or minute granularity with tools if you have to

[ Parent | on HN ]