Innovate Now to benefit from a cash injection

In the current climate are you now thinking of starting that ‘back burner’ project, modifying a production process or coming up with a new product or service?

The R&D tax credits scheme can help support your innovation by ensuring you are rewarded with a tax relief and/or cash benefit for the qualifying work you do.

Or, maybe you’ve done a project like this in the last two years and didn’t think about R&D tax relief or have been told your project doesn’t qualify? Then, now is the time to look at this in detail as claiming R&D tax relief could give your business the much need cash injection it needs right now.

Types of R&D activity could include;

• maximising production capability
• developing new product(s)
• developing a new process
• modifying an existing process
• increasing the speed, accuracy and/or reliability of an existing process
• repairing or modifying plant, machinery, equipment
• integrating components, equipment, machinery and parts
• developing new apps or software code
• new product development

But, to maximise your entitlement under the scheme, you need to ensure you record the evidence of what you did, dates and times, who was involved and what money was spent.

Collecting this evidence can be as simple as recording the above information once a week on a simple spreadsheet, or if you have a MIS system or something similar, setting up some codes within the system to collect the information. It can be quite simple.

Below are the key data elements you should be collecting for each project;

• Direct Staff costs (employee names and time spent on R&D, project meetings, testing, trials)
• Externally provided workers – agency staff (names and time spent on R&D)
• Subcontracted R&D (name of person or company and service provided)
• R&D consumables (materials used, parts, components, fittings, etc.)
• Prototypes
• Software
• Clinical trial volunteers
• Contributions to independent research

Remember also to log and record failed attempts and ideas that didn’t go the distance, those costs are also eligible.

So, why not spend this time getting these projects started or revisiting past projects and we’ll help you prepare for and claim back any R&D tax relief that could be due on them? We can help you set up the right system now to record the data needed on current or future projects and make sure that you start the project off in the best way.