Of course you would. That’s really what much of bad tax policy is: offering companies tax cuts that the companies really don’t need but will be happy to take anyway because it’s free. Like the research tax credit.

The president is set, via the IRS, to give away some more money to corporations, per Citizens for Tax Justice:

New IRS regulations issued on June 2 expand the ability of companies to claim the research credit retroactively for prior tax years on amended tax returns. This makes it far more likely that the credit will subsidize activities that businesses would have carried out anyway, even in the absence of any tax incentive.

The research credit is supposedly designed to encourage companies to expand the amount of research they conduct. That means it can be thought of as effective only to the extent that it subsidizes research that businesses would not have carried out anyway even if no tax break was offered to them. Of course, if a company carried out research and did not even become aware that it could claim the credit until three years later, there is no way that research was the result of the credit.

Boondoggle, indeed. Give away money for something never intended.