There is a fascinating hidden reason that so many high technological workers are dismissed now

A little -known change in the tax code during the first presidency of Donald Trump could well be the engine factor of all these technological layoffs in recent years.

As Quartz reportsA change of 2017 to a 70 -year tax law governing commercial expenditure only entered into force 2022 – and three years after finally doing, we can see how harmful this decision was.

In 1954, the Internal Internal Service promulgated article 174A rule that allows companies to deduct 100% of their research and development expenses (R&D), including wages for people involved. As Quartz Notes, companies like Microsoft and Apple were built on a tax system that rewarded R&D by allowing all these expenses to count as radiation – a system that Trump discreetly dismantled at the start of his first visit to the White House.

The president Tax on tax reductions and jobs (TCJA) of 2017 was perhaps the most sadly famous for having reduced companies’ taxes from 35% to 21. To compensate for the lost money of these massive cuts and comply with the Senate budgetary rules, the Congress Republicans discreetly added various rate increases to the R&D writing of the 174 section of section 174.

Under TCJA, companies began in 2022 to be forced to amortize or distribute their R&D deductions over a period of five to 15 years rather than doing so. The technological companies that were able to harm the wages of their wholesale developers were suddenly forced to pay them. According to Dismissals.FyiMore than 500,000 technological workers have lost their job since 2023 – and this change of rule, Quartz Notes, is probably the main reason.

While one might think that such a change impacting for the tax code would be deleted, the decision inspired a little more than cricket sounds like artificial intelligence And hirsur At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, took the blame.

“I work on these tax radiation and I had still not heard of it,” said a chief operating director Quartz. “It was so strangely silent.”

Earlier this year, a bipartite group of legislators launched, for the second timeA bill to reverse the TCJA damping rule. The so-called US action innovation and R&D Competitivitywhich was co -spared by nearly 70 members of the Congress and supported by a Large strip of types of technological industry Going from CRYPTO Bros to CFOs, seeks to change the 174 rule before the end of the year in the hope of overthrowing the damage of the TCJA Addendum.

Whatever the chances of passing the new bill, however, it is already too late for the hundreds of thousands of technological workers who have lost their jobs due to the change of rule – or to cancel the Pivot ai that he may well have inspired.

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