> Just remove the rule altogether. A company paying a wage to a software engineer shouldn't be taxed any differently than any other kind of employee.
In most other industries, product development is capitalized and amortized over the life of the product for tax purposes. It requires lots of estimation and log-keeping (X% spent on develpoment, 100-X% spent on maintenance). Which is exactly what your employer is doing... taxing you just like every other kind of employee.
The change just removed the specific loophole for software.
That would make sense if I was a consultant, or working for a consultancy, and billing someone else for those hours. As a full time salaried employee, time tracking is just a pain in my ass.
To make things worse, I believe that few, if any, companies doing this time tracking are doing it with any amount of rigor. If an auditor really wanted to check, they would find that the claimed capitalized expenses are overinflated, and are technically tax fraud.
Just remove the rule altogether. A company paying a wage to a software engineer shouldn't be taxed any differently than any other kind of employee.