We have gotten onto taxes more than what I think the OP wanted... but I will throw in an issue that seems to be left out...
My boss is one who makes over the $250K... and guess what... he says all the time he gets screwed... he had people do research for the research credit... but did not get to use them because after a SMALL amount of credit he hit the AMT tax... IIRC, he has over $60K of credits that he can not use...
So, any tax break they come up with, he will not do anything because HE will not get the benefit of it... you will need to change the AMT before someone like him will do anything...
I agree if you work for a mega corp making 250k or even 400k that most tax credits will NOT apply to you.
I do not think the tax credits should apply- your boss has the security of megacorp and makes a great income.
Take a small business owner which has about 250k or 400k of profit (income) each year. If that small business owner wants to make more money, they need to either
a) do more work themselves
b) have more passive income
c) hire someone to do some work (whether full time, part time, consulting or similar)
What gets the economy going is c), meaning that if that small business owner had $80k tax on that 250k profit, (33% tax), if that tax is reduced 15k or so, to where the business owner could choose to "expand" business by hiring another person for that 15k for some part time work, that does wonders to get economy going.
If that business owner just banked the 15k, then probably not, but most business owners will do little things to expand business if their "risk" is low.
Risk meaning if $1000 of profit is made, will owner keep $500 of that or less than that? Based on Fed tax+State tax+ insurance fees+medicare tax and similar will most of profit come back to business owner, or will various entities taking their cut make the investment in HIRING help not worth the risk.
My wife consults for small businesses and her fiscal year starts Oct 1. The upcoming fiscal year is probably going to be worst on record for her (even worse than 2008). Many small businesses which kept cash on hand to sustain business thru a down turn have now run out of cash.