Silicon Valley Rich In Line for $17 Billion Win in GOP Tax Bill

Silicon Valley’s favorite tax break may be getting an upgrade.

Venture capitalists, along with successful tech founders and early startup employees, already pay no taxes on billions of dollars of gains annually, thanks to a lucrative and complicated provision called Qualified Small Business Stock, or QSBS. Now the carve-out could get even more generous in changes included in Senate Republicans’ proposed tax and spending bill moving through Congress.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota.

Photographer: Allison Robbert/Bloomberg

The once-obscure provision is the subject of “every dinner conversation in Silicon Valley,” said Christopher Karachale, a partner at law firm Hanson Bridgett in San Francisco. “It’s already an exceptional benefit ...