Mark Law’s Post

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Business Development Specialist at Business Support Experts (BSE) Ltd.

Having spoken to several clients who have had retrospective compliance checks for R&D, it's evident that it is very difficult to actually have a conversation with anybody at HMRC who has the specific industry knowledge (or anyone at all actually) to accurately and fairly make a judgement or "call" on the qualifying activity that some of the claimants have undertaken in the name of R&D. We have had compliance checks for 0.2% of the claims we have done historically over 5 years, but this rises to over 1% for those awarded within the last 12 months. A driver for enquiries, seems to be any liability issues historically with HMRC and judgement seems to be passed without fully understanding what a client does. We have seen (already) a reluctance of Companies to submit subsequent R&D claims on the back of this approach, so not only are Companies being "accused" of falsely claiming and some wanting to draw a line under the process, they are not claiming relief where applicable for R&D activity done in the following year(s). So have HMRC "won"? I certainly think they have stopped genuine claims being submitted already. All of this despite the Government banging the R&D drum at every budget/statement over the last few years. In summary, a more focused approach to the new claims (AIF on Gov Gateway being a key change) standardises the process, which can only be a good thing, however, innovators are losing confidence in the scheme when the work they do, is being questioned retrospectively after it has been "awarded".

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