R&D Tax-Back.

If your company pays Corporation Tax, a ‘tax credit’ means you pay less tax. Or, if you have already paid out the Corporation Tax (and, in the case of R&D Tax Credits we can even claim backwards for two previous years) you get that money paid back to you straight into your account!

The amount you can reclaim from HMRC is calculated at 130% of all your qualifying development costs (‘Qualifying Costs’). This results in a return of 24.7% of your Qualifying Costs for profitable companies, or 33.35% for loss making companies.

The HMRC’s definition of R&D is very wide. It 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 (although pure product development by itself does not qualify).

Some examples of qualifying activities include software development (in any company, not just software development companies), engineering design, new construction techniques and, of course, more high-tech projects in industries such as bio-energy, life and health sciences.

We have found that most companies, in most industries, carry out activities which can legitimately fall within the scope of eligible R&D Projects.

Making an effective Tax Back claim is more than simply an accounting exercise. It’s crucial to understand what the legislation allows, to ensure your claim will be successful and that maximise the opportunity to claim what’s available to you.

Whilst we know that your accountant may offer to do this work, we’ve found that accountants will often prefer to play it safe and make a reduced claim as they may be unsure of how the legislation will be applied. Additionally, if HMRC come back with any queries or challenges to your accountant’s submissions, your accountant may not be best placed to argue these regulatory points with HMRC.

Additionally, unlike many accountants who will try to prepare these claims by themselves, we employ specialist industry experts who speak your language, and who are able to drill down into your business model to identify and unlock otherwise hidden R&D qualified expenditure within your core business functions.

So, overall, we believe that we offer our clients a much-enhanced service, which maximises your claim and provides a solid legal back up to deal effectively with any queries raised by HMRC.

We have streamlined the claims process to make it really easy for you to make a claim. Most claims will take HMRC around 4-6 week to process. Allowing a further 20 days for HMRC to get the money into your account, means the entire process can be completed within 6 – 8 weeks (start to finish).

This is all you need to do:

1. Initial ‘Go/No Go’ Check

The first thing we’ll do is send you a short introductory questionnaire to help us identify whether you’re likely to be able to claim your free money through the R&D Tax Credit.

You can also just speak direct with one of our R&D Tax Credit advisors to answer any questions and we can also give you an initial indication of whether your claim will succeed.

2. R&D Questionnaire

If you pass the initial hurdle (and most companies do!), we’ll send you a more detailed questionnaire which will help us identify all the possible areas of what HMRC will consider as ‘R&D’ (it’s a lot wider than you think!) and the maximum amount we think you will be able to claim.

You will be able to call us at any time to ask for help with completing the R&D Questionnaire or to answer any questions you have on the process.

3. Your Personal Claims Adviser

Once we receive your completed R&D Questionnaire, you will be assigned your own personal claims adviser who will review your responses and contact you to discuss any areas which aren’t clear or if there are areas where we may need some more information to prepare the claim and maximize your recovery.

4. Preparing the Draft Report

We will prepare a draft R&D Claims Report based on the information you have supplied in the R&D Questionnaire and any follow up information obtained by our claims adviser.

We will send you the Draft Report and you will be able to make any changes you want to it, and of course to discuss it with your claims adviser.

5. Finalisation

Once we have agreed it with you, we will send you the final R&D Claims Report for your review and approval.

6. Submission to HMRC

We will submit the agreed R&D Claims Report, together with the appropriate tax calculations and submit your Tax Form to HMRC.

7. Your free money or tax credit

HMRC says that it aims to process these claims within 4 to 6 weeks. Unless you happen to file at a busy time of year (such as December and March which are the most common financial year ends), we have found that most claims are processed within this period. So, unless there are any inquiries raised, HMRC should realise and process your payment within a few weeks.

8. Future claims

The good news is that R&D credits are not a ‘one-off’ claim. You can claim for each financial year which you have any R&D expenses. So, we’ll make a note to liaise with you directly when your next claim falls due. We can also help you streamline future claims through helping you identify potential R&D expenses and help you maintain records of costs incurred.

Simply get in touch with us (details below) and we’ll help you from start to finish, at entirely no cost to you, to secure your R&D Tax claim in the shortest possible time.