Copyright (c) 2009 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/timothy_addison Recent documents in Timothy V. Addison en-us Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:16:45 PDT 3600 http://works.bepress.com/timothy_addison/2 http://works.bepress.com/timothy_addison/2 Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:30:58 PDT On October 3, 2008, President Bush signed H.R. 1424 into law, thereby retroactively renewing the Research and Development Tax Credit and extending it through December 31, 2009. This marked the thirteenth time Congress renewed this provision of the Internal Revenue Code. In recent months, President Obama has proposed that this tax credit should be made permanent, evidenced by his 2010 fiscal year budget. Supporters of this tax credit tout this provision as being integral to promoting a vibrant economy and fostering research and development investment activities. The Congressional Budget Office also believes that the technologies generated through the research and development tax credit will impact other fields of industry. Yet, this credit does not effectively accomplish these admirable goals. Instead, it creates taxation inequality among private firms and needlessly subsidizes research and development activities that, because they were already economically viable, would have been pursued anyway. It also creates a trial of paperwork and accounting calculations that can date back more than twenty-five years. This tax credit promotes aggressive accounting tactics, huge legal and consulting fees for private firms, and astronomical litigation fees in defending the claimed credits. Simply stated, this credit does not work as Congress had intended. Timothy V. Addison Taxation