> It was passed by Congress during the first Trump administration in order to offset the costs of other corporate tax rate cuts, due to budgeting rules.
Wow, so there isn’t really a good faith steel man for this? They were just like, hey, we need to offset other cuts so let’s arbitrarily pick a high paying profession that, not so coincidentally doesn’t have a lot of influence in government, and let them take the hit?
I think it was more along the line that R&D had been formally encouraged with special expensing rules and in 2017 they removed the special treatment.