If your tax team is considering its next move and planning to begin advising on R&D tax relief, your practice is on its way to making a positive commercial step.
The increasing complexity of the scheme, coupled with HMRC’s intensive enquiry programme, has made the past couple of years difficult for full-service accountancy firms and tax teams without in-house R&D tax experts.
However, the scheme looks set for a period of stability now, with the new Government reaffirming its commitment to maintaining and supporting R&D tax relief.
This could be the ideal time to inject new life into your practice and provide some much-needed advice to your clients – incentivising their most innovative work!
Prepare in advance
The R&D tax claim process is now longer than it used to be.
To deliver an exceptional service that builds your reputation in the field, you’ll need to offer advice to your clients ahead of their Company Tax Return deadline, to provide enough time for:
- Advance notification – If your client hasn’t claimed before or it’s been three years or more since their last claim, you’ll need to help them provide advance notification to HMRC between the first day of the accounting period to which the claim applies to six months after the last day of the same period.
- Identifying qualifying projects – Not all expenditure is eligible for R&D tax relief and not all projects genuinely qualify as R&D for tax purposes, even if they nominally involve research and development, so you’ll need to identify this before starting a claim.
- The technical narrative – The introduction of the Additional Information Form (AIF) means the technical narrative, detailing how the project qualifies for the relief, is longer and more detailed than in previous years.
Preparing in advance, as you’ve likely found from other areas of your practice, will help you deliver a more cohesive and thorough R&D tax advisory service.
Familiarise yourself with the enquiry process
Although we all hope to avoid the dreaded ‘e’ word, your clients could be randomly selected for an enquiry into their claim or selected based on data modelling.
You’ll be much better prepared for managing an enquiry, which can be stressful for your clients, if you’re familiar with the process. You may already have fielded these investigations in other areas of your tax practice, but you should still be prepared for:
- The potential absence of an assigned case worker, which can slow things down
- A high level of detail required to prove eligibility
- Several recent Court verdicts both for and against HMRC
This will help to make the process faster and easier to navigate.
Partner with the experts
In our experience, you’ll always get a more in-depth insight into R&D tax relief and the claims process for your clients from the specialists. With us, you don’t need in-house experts to be the go-to for your clients’ R&D tax relief needs.
We dedicate ourselves and our expertise to R&D tax entirely, which has provided us with strong relationships with HMRC and within the sector, and unrivalled knowledge of the R&D tax landscape.
Incorporating this expertise into your practice will help you to truly stand out and act with integrity, letting your clients know that they can rely on your services.
For support with growing your R&D tax advisory, please contact a member of our team today to get started.