twodave parent
I think the obvious implication is that software development is expensive, ongoing and tends to result in relatively short term ROI, and therefore the amortization schedule of 5 years increases the likelihood smaller business will never collect most of it, while larger business that can absorb more up-front costs will be able to collect it pretty easily.
That is not an argument for tax treatment of whether something is an asset
I wasn’t trying to make that argument, but I were I would argue that software itself is more like a liability, or, at the most, a current asset[0]. Source code has no inherent value, and in fact the more you have the more expensive it is.