A fourth try for the Startup Act

The Startup Act, a proposed Senate bill to spur entrepreneurship, has been through more pivots than your typical startup.
Last Friday, Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) introduced a fourth version of the legislation, which they first pitched in December 2011, the Washington Post reports:

Startup Act 2.0, which had a few tweaks, arrived the following year, and Startup Act 3.0 was pitched the year after that. At this point, the bill’s authors have decided to stop counting, reverting to the original moniker, the Startup Act.

In addition to changing the tax code and cutting through some regulatory red tape — actions that entrepreneurs Steve Case and Carly Fiorina mentioned last week as solutions to encourage the creation of more small and medium-sized business — the bill would also promote immigration reform measures that have been espoused by figures like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.
The Startup Act seeks to create an “entrepreneur visa” allowing up to 75,000 non-citizens to launch companies in the U.S.; and another visa category for foreign-born students with American degrees.

Coupled with the immigration provisions, the latest Startup Act would make permanent a complete exemption on capital gain taxes on investments held for at least five years in qualifying small businesses (those with less than $50 million in assets), create a research-and-development tax credit worth up to $250,000 for companies less than five years old, and require federal officials to conduct a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the likely effects on start-up companies when proposing new rules and regulations.

The bill would also incentivize U.S. universities to develop a more efficient cash turn-around on their research:

The measure also would devote more federal funding to help American universities more quickly commercialize technology and inventions spawned by on-campus research.