Bill > A08831

This bill establishes a new tax credit for individuals in New York State who develop open source or free software license programs. Specifically, taxpayers can receive a credit of up to 20% of their out-of-pocket expenses for developing such programs, with a maximum credit of $200 per taxable year. For a program to qualify, its code must be released under an open source license recognized by the Open Source Initiative or a free software license recognized by the Free Software Foundation. Taxpayers must elect to claim this credit for a given taxable year, and this election cannot be made for the same program in multiple years. If the credit amount exceeds the taxpayer's tax liability for the year, the unused portion can be carried over to future years. This provision aims to encourage the development and public release of software under these types of licenses.