> Tracking was a challenge for human developers too, yet companies managed it when capitalization mattered.
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> Historically, that has been difficult because the cost of developer tools could not be allocated with this level of precision.
> The blind spot is that most accounting teams have not considered developer tool costs in this way because, in the past, they were used across all phases of a project and could not be allocated directly.
> The current habit of treating all AI agent costs as overhead is a carryover from a time when tool usage could not be measured and allocated. That era is over.
mneil•5mo ago
The tax code says you can't capitalize the cost of software because it has immediate value. Not to mention that SaaS billing is the way it is to get around this. People do not have immediate value for R&D so the government allows the cost to be capitalized (ie: deferred over time) to promote hiring more people to help a company grow. If you allow capitalizing AI then you promote the adoption of AI to replace the people for the R&D, the EXACT OPPOSITE of a public policy that exists to promote workers.
What are they even thinking? Certainly not about the reason the policy exists in the first place.