[nickspag]

In an effort to lower the deficit effects of the Trump tax cuts (i.e. increase revenue so they could cut further in other areas), they reclassified software developers salary so that their salaries have to be amortized over multiple years, instead of just a business expense in that year. This is usually done for assets as those things have an intrinsic value that could be sold.

In this case, business have to pay taxes on "profit" that they don't have as it immediately went to salaries. There were a lot of small business that were hit extremely hard.

They tried to fix it in the recent tax bill but it was killed in the Senate last I checked. You can see more here: https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/fact-sheet-on-....

Also, software developers in Oil and Gas industries are exempt from this :)