R&D Tax Grant Service

[dirty boy]

MaxFromage said:

Interesting, but I'd still rather leave it to the experts. It sounds like you may be one now... You can only keep on top of so much CPD. My concern would be the PI cover.

I'll never profess to being an expert in anything! I will say, to get it right, it's not a five minute job, but it's not complex and that's the key, just a lot of paperwork to put together...the calculations at the end are straight forward (or have been in my case, but I'm not dealing with millions of pounds in pharma companies or similar....so i'm sure things can escalate quickly).

[Hobo]

Putting together your own R&D claims is not a complicated procedure, and really doesn't need the services of a specialist who does these. The benefit of the specialists comes to the fore should HMRC decide to investigate the claim.

[StevieBee]

Thread bump as the subject is in the news today:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68435936

Exactly the same issued we suffered back on 2018/19... pay now, check the claim later.

[DSLiverpool]

StevieBee said:

Thread bump as the subject is in the news today:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68435936

Exactly the same issued we suffered back on 2018/19... pay now, check the claim later.

That’s why I always used Leyton who promised to defend any future challenge.

[StevieBee]

DSLiverpool said:

StevieBee said:

Thread bump as the subject is in the news today:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68435936

Exactly the same issued we suffered back on 2018/19... pay now, check the claim later.

That’s why I always used Leyton who promised to defend any future challenge.

Defending is one thing. The company we used did this too. Winning is another. In that, our company failed. Then went bust.

[db10]

i review the tax affairs for M&A for a living - R&D claims made by these "specialists" are always an area of interest as they are either outright wrong or massively aggressive (presumably because the higher the number the greater their commission).

We normally reduce the price paid for the company by the amount that the R&D is "wrong" by - which can be significant.

[Puzzles]

even years ago you could see it was going to end in tears

[Hobo]

But its not ending in tears, or not for those that are preparing accurate claims initially. HMRC are admittedly checking and questionning more claims, but that was always their right so nothing has fundamentally changed whatsoever.

The only concern really now is for those who a) are submitting questionable claims, or b) those who don't have the ability/understand to communicate with HMRC should their claim be challenged.

[StevieBee]

Puzzles said:

even years ago you could see it was going to end in tears

What I fail to understand is the logic behind HMRC's 'pay-now-check-later' on this.

If you apply for a grant for something, you have to demonstrate clearly what you are going to do and how this aligns with the nature and purpose of the grant on offer. This is considered and assessed before the application is approved. The only time you'd be asked to pay anything back having received the grant is if it were found that you spent the money on something else.

It seems with the R&D Credits, they'll accept whatever is put before them and worry about validity at some point in the future. I would imagine this gives rise to enormous levels of fraud.

That might be a price worth paying if there were some serious tangible benefits to the economy from the scheme but as far as I can tell, there isn't.

[StevieBee]

Hobo said:

But its not ending in tears, or not for those that are preparing accurate claims initially. HMRC are admittedly checking and questionning more claims, but that was always their right so nothing has fundamentally changed whatsoever.

The problem is Hobo, that many are preparing what they consider to be accurate claims. We spent an inordinate amount of time on ours, even though we were using a third party company to help. It was probably the most detailed and diligently prepared application of this type I've ever been involved with. It was submitted in all good and genuine faith which, when the money landed in the account, we reasonably (I think) assumed that HMRC agreed with. We even checked with HMRC on the definition of some of the activities we were looking to include.

It's good to hear that they are checking more applications .... but they really should be checking them all. As the article I posted earlier shows, they're still a long way from doing that.

Edited by StevieBee on Thursday 14th March 06:47

[Puzzles]

Hobo said:

But its not ending in tears, or not for those that are preparing accurate claims initially. HMRC are admittedly checking and questionning more claims, but that was always their right so nothing has fundamentally changed whatsoever.

The only concern really now is for those who a) are submitting questionable claims, or b) those who don't have the ability/understand to communicate with HMRC should their claim be challenged.

IF.

Taxpayers get hoodwinked into claiming and the "professionals" are long gone with their slice.

[Eric Mc]

The original regulations were so badly written it's no wonder incorrect claims were made. It's disgraceful that a government agency penalises businesses who THOUGHT they were making valid claims because of the ineptitude of the regulations.

[MaxFromage]

It looks like HMRC have used an incredibly poor interpretation of the legislation to allow them to retrospectively deny claims without any real investigation. I would say it's shocking, but we know what HMRC are like.

[AndyC_123]

Hi

Read this thread with interest.

I was speaking to company regarding this R&D jobby in 2022. They seemed keen to push the boundaries which didn't really sit too well with me, I was also flat out at the time so despite a few zoom calls nothing really progressed.

I have the opportunity to buy a property/site that would be a ready made research facility for the products we sell. Would like to run it past a legitimate R&D agent first as it'll probably be £3-£3.5 million to buy and being able to claim back will make a big difference to affordability and justifying the cost.

Any recomendations for people to speak to?

Thanks

[MaxFromage]

Excellent service and they charge less than a lot of inferior providers.

https://yes.tax/

[PurpleFox]

This being Piston Heads we are naturally discussing companies with multi million turnover and tax rebates of many tens of thousands…..I wondered if I could just ask a few questions based on smaller enterprises…

Is there a lower limit for a claim? I have a modest company which makes a small ish profit, I am tinkering with an idea and have started making some prototypes and testing etc. I am a one man band and testing is done in my garage. Sadly, no overseas trips are necessary but I think it may meet the criteria set out on the gov website for qualifying but there is no guide for size / total cost.

What happens if nothing comes of the R&D? You do the testing and find out it’s actually not possible or not financially viable to market and bin off the project. Can you sill make a claim?

Thanks

[b0rk]

PurpleFox said:

This being Piston Heads we are naturally discussing companies with multi million turnover and tax rebates of many tens of thousands…..I wondered if I could just ask a few questions based on smaller enterprises…

Is there a lower limit for a claim? I have a modest company which makes a small ish profit, I am tinkering with an idea and have started making some prototypes and testing etc. I am a one man band and testing is done in my garage. Sadly, no overseas trips are necessary but I think it may meet the criteria set out on the gov website for qualifying but there is no guide for size / total cost.

What happens if nothing comes of the R&D? You do the testing and find out it’s actually not possible or not financially viable to market and bin off the project. Can you sill make a claim?

Thanks

You can claim for failed or abortive research. A decent chunk of our cliams each year relate to research that produced an unsuccessful outcome. HMRC are very, very suspicious of cliams that are only for successful research. They expect someone engaged in genuine research to have failures and abortive projects.

Problem is with many consultants and advisors it’s the wild west on what they’ll try to claim on your behalf. There are plenty of sharks that will suggest the most aggressive possible claims, for work that is neither innovative or research. HMRC have governance wise been really, really poor on weeding out spurious submissions.