With HMRC watching R&D claims like a hawk, Richard Edwards, founder of the R&D Community explains how to submit a claim, understand abstract definitions and make a claim as watertight as possible
Research and development (R&D) tax relief can be difficult to navigate. Between updates to the scheme, stricter compliance measures from HMRC, and the need to manage client expectations, submitting a claim isn’t exactly straightforward these days.
There is also the very abstract definition of R&D to consider - even specialist R&D tax relief advisors struggle with nailing down eligibility, there’s a lot of rules and many of them are open to interpretation.
In determining eligibility, tools like an eligibility checklist can be particularly useful. These can help you to systematically assess each aspect of a potential claim and ensure that you haven’t missed something that HMRC will flag up if they review the claim.
