> software that is built, not bought, the company building it clearly values it exactly enough to pay the salaries of the software developers building it
Even in the absence of the Trump tax rule, a software company values the software they are building a lot more in financial terms than the cost of building it. Any project where value=cost should be cut, when the value is taking into account the value it brings to the rest of the company.
This is the entire point of the business, after all: take labor, land, and capital and make something that's worth a lot more to the world than the sum of the components.
You're advertising your rose-colored glasses strongly, my friend. In a perfect world, of course—you're correct. But hiring, project management, and resource allocation are messy endeavors, so your point only rings true under ideal circumstances. The real effect this will have on industry is a chilling effect on hiring as businesses now have to risk-mitigate because of the additional taxation burden. Further, I see this hurting small and less-well resourced companies relatively more so, as they now need to be more scrupulous over hiring.
Not at all, this is a fundamental difference in pricing and costs. The value of an asset is its price, not its cost. When a firm sets out to buy something for X from a different firm, they value it at X. When they build something with internal resources for a cost of Y, they do not value that asset at its cost Y.