The significant 2017 Tax Act benefit allowing R&D expenses to be deducted in the year incurred, rather than amortized over many years, terminates for years starting January 1, 2022, unless Congress amends that sunset provision.

And for companies which have farmed out R&D offshore, the write-off period in extended from 5 to 15 years.

The supposition behind the original legislation, aside from keeping jobs inside the US, was that future economic power would come through R&D and that the economy and US would better off if that R&D was plugged into US-based enterprises for commercialization.

What can business do in the circumstances?  Political activity of course could solve the problem.  For a temporary hedge, or indeed if there is no relief then a permanent hedge, comes from the obvious: speed up 2021 R&D, carefully account so that something that can be classified as a business expense does not leak into the R&D column, and concentrate as much as possible on US-based research.

Only changing the current law to extend the credit addresses the root issue: long-term best cash management through immediate write-offs of research costs.  And notwithstanding speed of write-off, it is of course possible that the better mouse-trap is being designed off-shore, and that the best net economic decision is to ignore geography in R&D; a significant invention is going to be more cash-positive than an R&D write-off time-line.  Thus the best solution addresses both preserving the one-year write-off and eliminating any distinction between  US tax treatment of R&D based on geography.

It is one thing to keep physical production on-shore, one can make an economic analysis about the cost-benefit ratio in that case.  Innovation is not the same as rolling steel.