R&D Tax Relief

 R&D tax credits are a tax relief designed to encourage greater R&D spending, leading in turn to greater investment in innovation. They work by either reducing a company’s liability to corporation tax or by making a payment to the company. 

 R&D tax credits are calculated based on your R&D spend. To make an R&D credit calculation, you need to identify qualifying expenditure and enhance it by the relevant rate. This produces your ‘enhanced expenditure’. At Athena, our average claim is typically around £51,000.

 The government’s R&D criteria are purposefully broad. Whatever size or sector, if your company is taking a risk by attempting to ‘resolve scientific or technological uncertainties’ then you may be carrying out qualifying activity.  

If you’re not sure if your project is possible, or you don’t know how to achieve it in practice, you could be resolving technological uncertainties and be carrying out qualifying R&D.

Within the government’s accepted research and development definition, R&D doesn’t have to have been successful to qualify. 

Not much or your end. We will do most of the work so you can focus on running your business. We will help you to ensure you get the most out of your claim. However, if we had to commit to a number, on average we require a total of 2.5 hours of our clients time. This may seem like a lot. However, keep in mind the average claim is £51,000. Not bad for 2.5 hours work!