How often do you say or hear: “Can I borrow your charger please? I’m down to 20%.” Batteries are the crucial force that keeps all our mobile tech working. Innovations in battery life extension are often crucial to the development of other aspects of technological progress. Are mobiles the most important market in terms of [...]

Have you done eligible R&D projects, but haven’t yet claimed your R&D tax relief? Anything you have accumulated up to the end of November 2017 could be lost, if your accounting date is April 2020 and you don’t get your R&D tax credit claim sorted by 30th November. What are the rules to making a [...]

All R&D tax relief claims require a reasonable investment of time and energy, especially if you are submitting it yourself. It is incredibly disheartening to wade through all the details of your application, only to be rejected by HMRC at the final hurdle. You know your project has a “scientific or technological advancement” as its [...]

This is one of the most amazing scientific developments to date. It simultaneously tackles the provision of affordable, durable prosthetic limbs and the environmental issue of using recycled plastic bottles. What is the innovation? De Montford University’s senior Mechanical Engineering lecturer, Dr Karthikeyan Kandan is the leader of this incredible innovation. He has discovered how [...]

You are not alone. The turnaround time for R&D tax credit claims reached 95 days last month. That’s more than three times HMRC’s own target of 28 days. It’s even worse for those companies that have submitted a Research and Development Expenditure Credit (RDEC) claim. HMRC’s processing time for these type of claims is now [...]

Grand Theft Auto is now owned by the American company Take-Two Interactive. It started life as DMA Design in Dundee then developed by Rockstar North and Rockstar Games. Last year their profits doubled to £8.3billion. The game is the most over 280 million copies worldwide and made the company £1bn over three days when it [...]

The Coalition for a Digital Economy (COADEC) recently reported on their research into the UK’s Research and Development Tax relief system with a focus on start-ups. Their summary presents seven recommendations to improve our current procedures, which we are focusing on here. Background Our last blog article contains information about COADEC’s research, including: international comparisons [...]

New research from the Coalition for a Digital Economy (COADEC) highlights several ways our R&D tax relief system could be improved. Updating definitions of what constitutes R&D and simplifying the administrative burden are two of their key findings. But will the government listen when they present to digital minister, Margot James? Are changes to R&D [...]

When you submit your R&D tax relief claim, you need to show that your project falls within HMRC’s definition of R&D. This applies to applications to both the R&D Tax Credit scheme and the RDEC scheme. It can be a bit daunting to decipher what this means, so we’ve broken it down into a few [...]

This example is taken from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Department’s ‘Guidelines on the Meaning of Research and Development for Tax Purposes’. We’ve broken it down into a bit more detail and used everyday English throughout. It is based on a fictional company’s project but all the R&D tax relief references are completely [...]