Lump sum of money for R&D tax credit relief

Don’t miss out on a lucrative R&D tax relief payout!

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“How can I identify clients that are eligible to claim R&D tax relief?”

If we had £1 for every time we’ve been asked this by a client, we’d (pauses to count on fingers) be rich! Seriously, it’s a common question, and one that’s surprisingly difficult to answer with more than an “it depends”.

The Government’s own guidance points out that R&D tax relief is not just for ‘white coat’ scientific research, as you might expect, but also for ‘brown coat’ development work in design and engineering involving overcoming difficult technological problems. However, this just broadens the scope and makes identifying eligible clients harder!

A process of elimination

If you were to ask us which of your clients definitely don’t qualify for R&D tax relief, that’s pretty easy. You can immediately dismiss all of you clients that are not limited companies – goodbye sole traders and LLPs! Once you’ve done that, we’d tell you to ignore any clients that are not going concerns, or already in administration – they’ll not be able to realise any benefit. The last easy filter is any companies that don’t have staff, and only pay the Directors dividends – unless you know that these companies have significant other costs, they won’t have expenditure to make a claim.

Narrow down the industries

After these easy black and white answers, however, everything turns various shades of grey. You could start by focussing on the industries and sectors where the most claims are made – the three sectors covering technical, IT and manufacturing account for 70% of claims, according to HMRC’s statistics. There will be a rich vein of eligibility within this section of your client base, and it’s a great place to start.

70% of claims

Identify the qualifying work

So, you’ve filtered out your definitely ineligible clients, and identified your technical, IT and manufacturing clients – what now? How can you assess the rest of your client base? This is where your in-depth knowledge of your clients, their businesses and their particular problems comes in. No-one is better placed than you to identify the clients who have expanded their product range through innovation and product development; taken on new staff to work on research products; received grants linked to development; employed staff with R&D-related job titles, such as testers, engineers, developers and designers; spent a lot on contractors to help with problem-solving; included costs for subcontractors, development or R&D in their accounts; or seen an increase in wastage and cost-overruns. 

Throughout this, you should bear in mind that qualifying work can include creating new processes, products or services, making appreciable improvements to existing ones, and even using science and technology to duplicate existing processes, products and services in a new way. 

Simplify your claims process

This assessment might seem daunting, even once you’ve filtered your list down to just those companies that you think are likely to be eligible. This is where WhisperClaims comes in – with its no obligation, real-time assessment of eligibility, you can enter the details of all of your potential claimants and let the system help you assess which of these to take forward, without incurring any additional costs.

Up to 33% back in R&D tax

Claimants can get back up to 33%!

So, why go to all this effort? Why make sure that all of your eligible clients are claiming? In short, because by not claiming, they’re missing out on a potentially lucrative payout for not very much work. Claimants can get back up to 33% of their eligible spend on R&D, and we’ve never met a company that wouldn’t welcome some extra income!

How to write an R&D tax relief technical narrative

With HMRC’s new mandatory requirement for project descriptions on all submissions, we wanted to share our experiences to help others to write their best possible technical narratives.

Available to download here.

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