Frequently Asked Questions
R&D Tax Credits are a very niche part of the UK tax code that could bring your company thousands of pounds in tax relief.
Many businesses believe that R&D tax claims are limited to brand new products or ideas and are only available to certain industry sectors. This is not always the case. If you believe your business is investing in development or innovation, then in short you could be eligible to claim R&D tax credits.
The three questions to ask yourself to help determine if you could qualify are:
- Are you trading as a limited company?
- Are you or have you carried out research around a process or developed a product?
- If so, have you spent money around the project?
The R&D claims are not limited to successful projects only, you can also claim on unsuccessful projects as long as you have evidence of technical uncertainty.
First and foremost, your R&D claim will come in the form of a corporation tax deduction. If your claim then reduces your CT liability to a tax loss position, you may then be eligible for a cash credit, which will be sent directly to your account.
Yes absolutely! We work with various businesses that are in pure development phase. The incentive is enhanced and enables you take a cash credit in the first instance.
We are able to go back two accounting periods e.g. if your company’s year-end is 31st March 2018, then you have until 31st March 2020 to submit your claim.
- We have the knowledge of all the eligible costs that you can claim, to ensure you don’t miss any or include costs you shouldn’t.
- We guide you through the process to ensure we capture all relevant information and expenditure to ensure HMRC get a fair representation of your claim.
- We ensure a compliant claim, therefore minimising the risk of enquiry/claim rejection.
- Our streamlined process will save you time and take the pressure off you to submit to HMRC.
Your R&D claim will consist of a technical report for each eligible financial year. The report includes details of your R&D projects and expenditure calculations for the period.
R&D allowable costs can be complex, with various nuances around what is eligible. That said, the primary costs often claimed are:
- Staff time reflected in gross salary
- Employers NI & pension contributions
- Any additional bonuses given out during the period
Your business could be eligible to receive between 18.85p - 33.35p for every £1 you spend on R&D eligible activities.
HMRC enquires can happen for a number of reasons from random selection, to the information within the technical report. Rest assured that even if your claim is enquired into, we have in-house experts to look after the enquiry and fight your corner, all included within our fee.
They will need to provide us with the core financial documents, which we will request from them in the early stages of our process. We aim to keep your accountant’s involvement to a minimum.
We understand that your time as a business owner is precious. We have optimised our processes to find an efficient balance between spending enough time to properly understand your business and R&D projects, whilst not wasting your time with repetition or lack of research. Typically, you’ll spend between 1.5 – 2 hours with us.
Our commitment to you is to complete our report and submit to HMRC within 4 weeks of engagement. This gives us enough time to gather information and prepare your claim submission. That said, due to only being able to claim for up to prior 2 financial years, we are able to reduce our processing time if required by an impending deadline.
“Blackwell Tax have seamlessly worked with our clients having successfully processed 27 R&D claims. They have been really easy to work with have looked after our clients, which was really important to us as
Jay Singh – Leodis Financial
“Blackwell Tax have provided fantastic R&D service for our clients. We have outsourced all our R&D work to Blackwell Tax and this has freed us up. They have also provided additional revenue stream.” –
Al Hajj Bah – Almo Accountants
“Birmingham-based manufacturing business, has secured its 3rd consecutive year of R&D tax relief, totalling over £200,000 from the Government’s tax incentive scheme.”
Steven Jones
“Recycling plastic business, has claimed R&D tax relief amounting to £129,885 from HMRC under the R&D corporation tax reclaim scheme.”
Ms Rebecca Lynn
“Blackwell Tax experts has helped a small precision engineering company reclaim more than £90,000 in tax following an initial research and development HMRC claim.”