The case at the First Tier Tribunal (FTT) centred on a claim by Get Onbord Limited (GOL) for research and development (R&D) tax credit under section 1054 of the Corporation Tax Act 2009 (CTA 2009).

The initial claim was rejected by HMRC as the project did not advance ‘overall knowledge or capability’ in its opinion.

The Get Onbord project focused on development of artificial intelligence (AI) software designed to ‘develop AI-enabled holistic analysis of a new counterparty during a financial services customer onboarding process that could achieve a superior outcome to human analysis’.

At the time of the hearing on 3 January this year, Get Onbord was already in the process of liquidation through a voluntary arrangement leading to a procedural issue before the hearing could go ahead.