R&D tax claims after the reset: what accountants and advisers told us

During our recent webinar, “ R&D tax claims after the reset: Re-examining eligibility, evidence, costs & benefit ”, we shared a number of live polls to explore how firms are approaching R&D tax claim preparation in practice. Through this we hoped to gain some understanding of how confident advisers are feeling about R&D tax relief in general, and what steps they are taking to improve their processes. Here’s what we found out!

Assessing eligibility

Firstly, we asked about how confident participants were about the consistency of R&D eligibility assessments across their firms. Happily, 80% said they were very or reasonably confident that decisions were being made consistently across their firm. In these days of increased compliance, it’s great to see firms looking at making sure every claim they submit is eligible.

What was equally notable, however, was that confidence is still often driven by individual judgement rather than documented, repeatable process.

10% of participants were candid in recognising that eligibility is an area they’re actively reviewing, which again is reassuring to see – improvement only comes from acknowledging the problem!

Question 1: How confident are you that eligibility decisions are being applied consistently across your firm’s R&D claims?
Very confident – we have a clear, documented approach | 28%
Reasonable confident, but reliant on individual judgement | 52%
Mixed – consistency varies by team member or claim | 10%
This is an area we’re actively reviewing | 10%

Approaches to technical narratives

When asked how technical narratives are prepared, responses reflected a pragmatic approach.

34% of participants reported building narratives from first principles for each project – the gold standard, although time-intensive, particularly for firms working across multiple sectors.

The most common approach (43% of responses) was a structured mix of templates and project-specific input, which wasn’t surprising. Templates are part of almost every firm’s process to some degree, and are low risk as long as they’re adapted to evidence uncertainty and advancement for each individual project.

Question 2: Which option best describes how technical narratives are usually prepared in your firm?
Built from first principles for each claim | 34%
Adapted from prior claims and tailored | 14%
A structured mix of templates and project-specific inputs | 43%
We’re currently reassessing our approach | 9%

Understanding eligible costs

The clearest signal from the polling related to eligible costs.

Subcontractors and externally provided workers (EPWs) stood out as the area raising the most questions, with 70% of respondents flagging this as an area of concern. Given this is where the merged RDEC scheme has introduced the most change, and requires the greatest shift in process and interpretation, this was entirely expected.

Staff apportionment is also challenging according to the polling, with 33% of respondents worried about this. Again, this was unsurprising given that most companies do not use time sheets, and with the backdrop of increased HMRC compliance, being able to justify apportionments has become vitally important..

Question 3: Which areas tend to raise the most questions when reviewing eligible costs?
Staff apportionments | 33%
Subcontractors/EPWs | 70%
Legacy assumptions rolled forwards | 7%
Interaction between costs and benefit | 13%

(NB: the eligibility and narrative polls were single-choice questions. The costs poll allowed multiple selections, reflecting overlapping areas of uncertainty.)

Conclusions

None of these results point to poor practice or misunderstanding. What they reinforce is something we discussed during the session: the fundamentals of R&D claim preparation haven’t changed, but closer scrutiny means that advisers are more concerned than ever in making sure that they’re applied correctly every time.

What seems clear is that firms are now leaning into healthy reflection and improvement rather than retreat in delivering R&D tax services, showing that confidence is returning to the sector.

Watch the recording and what’s next

The full webinar recording is now available to watch on demand:

Watch webinar back

We’ll also be building on one of the strongest themes to emerge from the polls — subcontractors and overseas costs — in an upcoming webinar next month. This topic was already planned, but the poll results clearly confirmed it’s an area accountants and advisers want more clarity on. Save the date: Wednesday 11 February 2026 at 12 noon. Full details to follow shortly on our events page!

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