RD Relief
R&D Tax Credits for Electrical Engineering
The software underpinning RDRelief was sold to one of the big-4 professional service firms in 2018. Consequently, the brand is no longer in operation.
- R&D Tax Advisors are invited to find out more about the Inspired.tax claim preparation software.
- Otherwise, please feel free to continue to browse this website for useful information regarding claiming R&D Tax Credits in the UK. However, beware that none of the information has been updated since 2018.
Contents
Background
Electrical Engineering is a discipline that deals with three different areas; electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism and can involve anything from developing a powerplant to developing electronic devices within an electronics circuit. Projects within each of these fields are frequently eligible for R&D Tax Credits, where they are seeking to create a new (or appreciably improve an existing) Technology.
Eligibility Criteria
Main article: Eligibility Criteria
The UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has explicitly defined R&D Tax Credits. This briefing will help you determine the types of Electrical Engineering projects that are eligible and what costs could qualify.
The eligibility criteria apply to all fields of Science and Technology rather than just Electrical Engineering (hence they are quite generic). They state:
- An R&D project must seek to achieve an Advance in Science or Technology
- The team must attempt to overcome Scientific or Technological Uncertainty in achieving the Advance
Technological Advance in Electrical Engineering
Main article: Scientific or Technological Advance
The Scientific or Technological Advance must be relative to the current industry baseline within Electrical Engineering. Hence it can't be that you are applying Technology for which there is already a publicly available reference. Likewise, it can't be a commercial, business or functional Advance - it strictly must be a Scientific or Technological Advance.
For circuit design, this may be that you are developing a component for that generates 10% less heat than your existing components. It might be that a competitor's chips already release less heat than your chips, but because these are not comparable (maybe yours are faster or some other differentiator) and so achieving the reduced heat dissipation is equally claimable.
Alternatively, it may be that the project is focussing on telecommunications engineering and your engineers are attempting to create an appreciable improvement in reliability. For example, it may be that your engineers are seeking new knowledge and capability around data loss when transmitting through legacy, analogue devices.
Technological Uncertainty in Electrical Engineering
Main article: Scientific or Technological Uncertainty
Although Electrical Engineers sometimes don't know whether some requirement will even be possible, it is more frequently the case that it is how to achieve it in practice that brings about the Uncertainty. For example, there may be several ways to reduce the heat produced by a component, however, which combination of techniques will be able to achieve this, without adversely affecting the chip's reliability, performance or physical size is uncertain.
Includable Activities
Main article: Directly Contributing Activities
Unlike most tradition project timelines, an R&D Tax Credits project starts when work to resolve Uncertainty commences and ends when the Uncertainty is resolved or work otherwise ceases.
Hence the initial function specification for the project would not typically qualify, but once Technological design commences, this would often be the start of working to resolve Technological Uncertainty, and so would be the start of the claim period. You can include any engineering, testing or project management. However, after overcoming the uncertainty, any support or maintenance would typically be excluded from the claim.