Our team of full-time Research & Development (R&D) tax relief specialists has highlighted the key areas where there are opportunities to maximise your R&D claim that can be commonly missed:
Grant funding
Companies often incorrectly believe that receiving grant funding means that they are not eligible to claim R&D tax relief. This is not the case; the receipt of a grant can, however, impact upon the level of relief a company is entitled to claim.
Depending on the type of grant received it can cause some or all of the qualifying project expenditure to be ineligible under the R&D SME scheme, potentially for the entire life of the project. A specialist R&D advisor will be able to apply the detailed legislation to each of your projects to ensure you claim the maximum amount of relief you are entitled to.
An experienced advisor will also be able to help you to proactively maximise your R&D claim in relation to grant funding. If you are considering applying for a grant, our team can guide you on how to structure your application to ensure that it does not adversely impact upon your R&D claim.
Customer contracts
There is also a misconception that when a company has been approached by a customer to undertake R&D that these activities are not eligible for relief. In fact, depending on the factors specific to each engagement you may still be eligible for relief. Our specialist R&D team can review customer contracts to determine if a claim is eligible and we can also proactively review contracts to ensure any new projects are eligible.
Investments
A claimant company is required to include the accounting data of other entities if they are considered to be ‘linked’ or ‘partner’ enterprises. Aggregating this data can cause a company to breach the SME thresholds for R&D purposes, making the company ineligible for relief at the preferred rate.
This is something that should be considered when carrying out an investment round. Our R&D team can advise whether a proposed investment will breach any of these limits.
Dividends
It is common for directors to take dividends, rather than putting themselves on the payroll, to avoid paying money through the PAYE scheme that could otherwise be invested back into the business. However, dividends are not a qualifying cost for R&D tax relief purposes and, as such, cannot be included in a claim.
As employees’ and directors’ gross salaries are a qualifying cost, it may be worth considering adding any directors to the payroll and paying them below the personal allowance and national insurance thresholds, so no PAYE or NIC are payable, and pay any further remuneration as dividends.
Staff versus freelancers
In the early stages, many companies will outsource work to specialists or utilise subcontractors and agency workers. For SME claims, costs spent on engaging with subcontractors and agency workers will be restricted to 65%. Furthermore, if you are claiming under the RDEC scheme, there are multiple restrictions on third party costs – as well as a payable PAYE/NIC cap. This means you may not be able to claim any of the costs incurred.
Third party costs
Subcontractor and externally provided worker costs, in most cases, require a statutory restriction of 65% to be applied. However, if a third party is considered to be ‘connected’ to the claimant company or if an election to be treated as connected is made, relief for 100% of the costs can claimed.
Here at CT, our R&D specialists have years of experience preparing and submitting successful claims for hundreds of companies, across both R&D schemes (RDEC and SME), in multiple industries.
If you are considering claiming relief and would like to hear how we can help you, please email us at RDtax@ct.me.
