It's not a big deal because this change affects very few companies outside of Silicon Valley and it only affects companies at the start of the R&D process.

After 5 years, the tax impact evens out to be the same as currently expensing R&D salaries.

And generally, software companies have gotten the benefit of the R&D credit even for things would not have qualified for the R&D credit if it had not involved software, so this change was merely seen as correcting a tax loophole that the software industry has been exploiting (and arguably abusing) for several decades.

It very much affects bootstrapped companies building a software product. I'm not sure where you got the idea that it only affect Silicon Valley companies?

If you bootstrap your company to the point where you can afford one engineer's salary, you can only deduct 20% of that against your revenue. I.e. you've paid out all the cash and but you still have to pay taxes on the 80% that is not allowed to be expensed this year.

This is how it has always worked for non software companies...

If your business isn't solvent without tax loopholes, your business isn't really a business.

Businesses have always been able to deduct salaries at 100%. Software businesses are now not allowed to do that. I have no idea what you're talking about.

The R&D tax impact will NOT even out. its taxes you pay for 5 years that you don't get back. R&D tax credits is a small right-off and not worth the efforts. Lots of startups don’t even do the R&D tax credits because of the cost and time evolved to do all the necessary records, backups and reports.

This is a pretty ignorant comment.