Why stepping away from R&D tax might be the bigger risk…

Over the past few years, a number of accountancy firms have made the decision to step away from offering R&D tax advice.

The decision wasn’t necessarily taken lightly. Firms can still see opportunity within their client base, but confidence in managing the risk has changed.

That’s an understandable reaction to the volume of structural and legislative change within the scheme, but it raises an important question. What happens to those clients?

When firms step back

Generally speaking, one of three things happens when firms stop offering R&D advice – it gets referred out; it’s left to the client to find an alternative provider; or, it’s just dropped altogether. And the consequence? Valid opportunities could be missed.

In fairness, it’s not always the firm’s choice – from talking to our own customers, we understand that claimants themselves have been spooked by the changes, so the decision about whether or not to embark on identifying if a valid claim exists has been taken out of their hands.

Is control (not avoidance) the answer?

What’s changed in recent years is the level of complexity, and the consequences of getting a decision wrong.

With multiple scheme routes, evolving legislation, and increased scrutiny, judgements about eligibility now depend on navigating a far more layered set of rules and interactions, making applying said rules consistently, and with confidence, so much harder.

Stepping away might feel like the safest option, but it comes at a cost. At firm level, this can mean lost revenue, reduced visibility and less control over client outcomes. For the claimant, it may mean missing out on business-sustaining tax relief or – at the other extreme – suffering further downstream if a new provider overlooks something important in their wider tax affairs.

So what is the alternative? Put structure around how decisions are made, so that both a “yes” and “no” (in terms of whether a claim should or should not proceed) are grounded in something solid and consistent.

Putting structure around the decision

This means having a framework that can take your client data and apply the rules in real time – asking the right questions, routing each claim down the correct path, surfacing issues early, building in checks and balances that reduce reliance on memory or individual expertise, and thus creating a clear basis for decision-making.

Sometimes that decision will be to proceed, and sometimes it won’t. But either way, it’s a decision made in a transparent and well-informed way.

Where WhisperClaims fits

WhisperClaims was built to support firms delivering R&D tax in-house, without taking control away from them.

It provides structure around the decision-making process, applying the rules through a dynamic compliance engine, identifying ineligible claims early, and supporting more complex cases with access to an Advice Line of experienced R&D tax specialists.

There’s no outsourcing model behind it. No competing interest in your client relationships.

It operates in the background, supporting you to deliver the work with consistency, while maintaining control of both the process and the client.

And if a claim is identified as ineligible, there’s no cost to proceed.

Are you stepping away from R&D tax because it’s too complex…?

Or because you don’t yet have the structure to manage it with confidence?

If stepping away no longer feels like the right decision, we’re happy to show you what a more controlled, compliance-first approach looks like in practice.

Let’s talk it through