It’s a banner day for Yushin America, a robotics company that has 60 employees on Kenney Drive in Cranston.

The wholly owned subsidiary of Japan’s Yushin Precision Equipment was featured prominently in a New York Times story today about the various business tax breaks included in the Obama-GOP tax deal currently making its way through Congress:

At Yushin America, a Rhode Island company that makes and maintains robotic manufacturing equipment, executives say that the business tax breaks would allow them to invest in new machinery, new employees and even a new roof.

“It’s a chance for us to put it back in the business and grow,” said Michael Greenhalgh, operations manager of the company in Cranston, which employs 60 people and has annual sales of about $21 million.

Tax cuts intended for businesses are a relatively small part of the $858 billion tax bill scheduled for a final vote in the Senate as early as Tuesday.

The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that about $75 billion of the tax breaks in the plan were aimed at businesses, including $13 billion for a two-year extension of the coveted research and development credit, which helps cover the cost of wages for employees involved in research. The proposal also commits $22 billion for accelerated depreciation, which in 2011 would allow businesses to write off 100 percent of their capital expenditures immediately instead of over several years.

I called up Greenhalgh, who’s worked at Yushin for 10 years, to ask how his company wound up making it into the article, and he said it was probably thanks to the tax consultants who helped the firm’s management figure out how they qualified for the research-and-development tax credit.

Yushin makes robotic equipment that other companies then use to manufacture their own products. Consumers don’t buy Yushin’s products – “they’re going to buy the thing that my thing touches,” Greenhalgh said, from phones and computer keyboards to medical products like drains and IVs.

This is the first time that 22-year-old Yushin America applied for the R&D credit, Greenhalgh said. “The rules have been relaxed,” he said. “Before you had to be NASA and run around with leather binders documenting everything.” Now companies like Yushin can conduct a sample of their engineers’ work to extrapolate how much of what they do qualifies for the tax breaks.

Yushin sent in its materials for the tax credit early this fall, but Greenhalgh said the company is still waiting to receive its checks from the government.

(image credit: Yushin America)