It has been a common tactic to work around the filibuster and reconciliation rules, and to repeal them later. They didn't expect the democrats to oppose the repeal so hard and destroy tech jobs on their watch. They know no one will ever blame them for it, like you can see on HN. Democrats platform is all about higher taxes on corps so that tracks with their actions, jobs be damned.
The point is that you don't need 60 votes to break a filibuster to increase or decrease taxes or make any other budget related changes in a once-a-year budget bill called the reconciliation bill. You just need a simple majority of 51 votes(or 50 plus VP to break the tie like the dems had).
This process was used several times to pass key and major bills like the Inflation Reduction Act, Trump's tax bill in 2017, the big beautiful bill last month etc.
Dems did not need 60 votes to restore the R&D exemption changes. They could've just included it in the reconciliation bills they passed with just 50 votes because it qualifies as a budgetary change. That's exactly how the Republicans got it done recently after getting back in power, with zero Dem votes for this change.
You completely missed that in your comment so I was trying to add some information.
