RD Relief
Planning as part of an R&D Tax Credits Project
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
Almost every R&D project requires some degree of planning prior to its commencement.
Sometimes these planning costs may be negligible and at other times planning will have been undertaken by external teams.
However, R&D planning is structured and financed within your company, it is important to understand how these activities should be treated within your R&D claim as they cannot necessarily be included within your claim.
BEIS Definition
"Scientific or technological planning activities associated with a project directly contribute to resolving the scientific or technological uncertainty associated with the project, and are therefore R&D. These include defining scientific or technological objectives, assessing scientific or technological feasibility, identifying particular scientific or technological uncertainties, estimating development time, schedule, and resources of the R&D, and high-level outlining of the scientific or technical work, as well as the detailed planning and management of the work."
"Elements of a company's planning activity relating to a project but not directly contributing to the resolution of scientific or technological uncertainty, such as identifying or researching market niches in which R&D might benefit a company, or examination of a project's financial, marketing, and legal aspects, fall outside the category of scientific or technological planning, and are therefore not R&D"
Analysis
As with other (non-QIA) activities, planning must contribute to the resolution of scientific or technological uncertainty to be included within the R&D claim. Most often we find that this means that companies need to apportion which costs should be included within the claim - stripping out all business and commercial activities (that are not typically linked to overcoming the project uncertainty)
Other planning activities that are not pre-defined QIAs and are not contributing to the scientific or technological aspects of the project (often because they occur before the scientific and technological problems have been identified) should also be excluded from the claim. For example, planning around the project's functional requirements.