As R&D tax consultants, we are always keen to document and discuss the new measures taken by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to improve the quality of R&D tax relief claims.
We have been highlighting recently that the measures taken so far to improve compliance have been working, but HMRC are continuing their push for a higher standard.
The latest move has been to create an expert panel to guide the future of R&D tax relief claims.
We want to explore who the panel are and what impact they can have on the scheme.
Who is on HMRC’s expert panel?
HMRC’s expert panel brings together six independent advisors from some of the fields with the largest number of R&D tax relief claims.
The panel features:
- Dr Nektaria Efthymiou – Director of network platform and security research, BT Group
- Dr Zahra Jawad – CEO and founder, Creasallis
- Dr Gareth Jenkins – Vice president of science & technology, Quotient Sciences
- Prof Richard Scaife – Former regional development director, University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC)
- Oliver Stevens – Chartered AI systems engineer, and head of AI and machine learning, Becoming
- Melissa Strange – Chief financial officer, EnteroBiotix
Mainly representing life sciences, advanced manufacturing and AI, the panel will seek to offer guidance on emerging trends, potential risk areas and offer advice and input on how to improve guidance.
How effective will the expert panel be?
The level to which the panel will inform HMRC’s guidance is unclear at the moment.
The panel is set to meet on a quarterly basis in an advisory capacity, so it will not be able to enact policy or procedure changes in its own right.
Similarly, the panel itself is not empowered to review individual R&D tax relief claims.
It has been suggested that HMRC have a lack of specialist understanding of R&D and that makes assessing the validity of R&D tax relief claims unnecessarily difficult.
However, this has been a feature of the scheme since its inception and a primary reason why the technical narrative exists so that the advance can be explained to non-experts.
Given that the panel will not have any direct input on R&D tax relief claims, it is unclear how its existence will help HMRC agents understand whether a claim is valid when they are assessing it.
What can be hoped for with the panel is that they work to provide more detailed guidance that could enable a higher quality of R&D tax relief by further discouraging ineligible claims from being submitted in the first place.
We will be keeping a close eye on the impact that the panel has on the future of R&D tax relief claims.
It is good to see more expert voices informing procedure at HMRC, although anyone expecting things to change for individual claims may be disappointed at the limited influence of the expert panel.
However, as an R&D tax consultant, we are on hand to help improve the quality of eligible R&D tax relief claims.
We have our own experts who cover a wide range of sectors and can help with identifying qualifying expenditure and improving the quality of technical narratives to ensure that complex R&D work can be easily understood by non-experts.
