What we are watching.
Writing for the people who sign the contracts and carry the audit exposure. Each piece takes one thing that is moving in federal contract cost or federal tax and explains what it does to a contractor.
The Most Serious Deficiency
The certified cost-or-pricing-data threshold moved by statute. The cost-accounting coverage thresholds did not. Treating the two as one relief package is how a contractor claims something it does not yet have.
The Number No One Watches
Three depreciation figures are supposed to differ. What they are not supposed to do is separate quietly, until an auditor characterizes the gap as a change in cost accounting practice.
The Research the Government Already Paid For
Whether research qualifies is settled by the agreement behind it. Both failure modes show up in the case law, and both usually live in the same company.
The through-line
Every one of these turns on the same fact: the cost records examined on the contract side are the same records that set the federal tax position. Read them once, and read them for both.