Common Questions About
R&D Tax Relief

R&D tax relief is a UK government incentive that allows companies to reduce their corporation tax bill — or receive a cash payment — based on money spent on qualifying research and development activity. It's designed to reward companies that are genuinely trying to advance science or technology, and it's one of the most generous business tax reliefs available. Eligible companies can recover a significant percentage of their qualifying R&D expenditure, often running to tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds.

To qualify, your company needs to be a UK-incorporated limited company paying corporation tax, and it must have undertaken work that seeks to achieve an advance in overall knowledge or capability in a field of science or technology — and that advance must have involved the resolution of scientific or technological uncertainty. In practice, many tech and science companies qualify without realising it. If your team has had to figure out how to do something that wasn't already documented or known, there's a good chance some of that work qualifies.

Qualifying work involves activities directly aimed at resolving scientific or technological uncertainty — where a competent professional in the field couldn't simply look up the answer. For software and tech companies this might include: developing novel algorithms or data structures, building new AI/ML models, creating new protocols or architectures, or solving infrastructure problems that don't have existing solutions. Routine development — fixing bugs, building to established patterns, integrating existing APIs — generally doesn't qualify. The line isn't always obvious, which is exactly where having an advisor with a technical background helps.

It depends on the scheme you fall under and the nature of your expenditure. Under the merged RDEC scheme (which applies from April 2024 for most companies), you can receive a taxable credit worth 20% of qualifying R&D spend. R&D-intensive SMEs that are loss-making may qualify for the enhanced SME intensive scheme, which provides more generous relief. The qualifying costs that can be included are broad: staff costs (including salaries, NI, and pension contributions), subcontractor costs, software licences, consumables, cloud computing costs, and more. I'll give you a realistic estimate once I understand your situation.

Preparing the claim typically takes two to four weeks from our initial kickoff, depending on the complexity of the projects and how quickly information can be gathered. Once submitted, HMRC aims to process claims within 40 days, though in practice it can be faster. I'll keep you informed throughout and flag anything that might affect the timeline.

Yes — and this surprises many people. R&D tax relief rewards the attempt, not the outcome. The fact that a project didn't succeed, or that you abandoned a line of research, doesn't disqualify it. What matters is whether the work involved genuine scientific or technological uncertainty and was carried out systematically. Failed experiments are often the clearest evidence of real R&D.

Yes. Loss-making companies can still benefit. Under RDEC the credit is taxable income, which can reduce any tax owed or be carried forward. R&D-intensive SMEs that are loss-making may qualify for the enhanced SME intensive scheme, which allows you to surrender losses and receive a cash payment from HMRC — meaning you can receive real money even if you're not yet profitable. This is especially valuable for early-stage startups burning cash on genuine R&D.

Yes, subject to HMRC's time limits. You can typically amend your corporation tax return to include an R&D claim up to two years after the end of the accounting period. So if you've been doing qualifying R&D and never claimed, you may be able to go back and recover relief for past years. I can help you identify what's still within the window.

If HMRC opens an enquiry, I'll handle it. I'll review their questions, draft technical responses, and act as your representative throughout the process. Because I build claims to be defensible from the start, the vast majority don't attract HMRC scrutiny — but if yours does, you won't be navigating it alone.

For R&D tax credit claims, I charge a success fee — a percentage of the tax benefit you receive. You only pay if you get a result. For enquiry support and ongoing strategy work, I charge a fixed fee agreed upfront. In either case, I'll give you a clear quote before we start so there are no surprises.

General accountants are excellent at what they do, but R&D tax is a genuinely specialist area — particularly for tech and science companies where the technical narrative is the heart of the claim. Most accountants will happily refer R&D work to a specialist, and I work alongside existing accountants all the time. I focus on the R&D piece; your accountant handles everything else. It's a complementary relationship, not a competitive one.

Much less than you might expect. I typically need one or two conversations with a technical person at your company (often the CTO, lead engineer, or a senior developer), plus access to your financial records for the period. I do the heavy lifting — writing the narrative, calculating the costs, preparing the forms — and keep interruptions to your team to an absolute minimum.