Many companies will just be beginning their new financial year. Now that the accounts are most likely done and dusted, you are already waiting for your R&D tax credit claim to be processed.
Typically, we look at R&D claims retrospectively, assessing projects’ eligibility, calculating costs and obtaining necessary information. However, if you already know that research and development is a vital part of your business and submitting a claim is on your annual to-do list, maybe it’s time to change perspective and start planning your business activities through the R&D lens to assist your claiming process.
R&D is inevitably associated with uncertainty and unpredictability of its results. However, to reduce this uncertainty, you can retrospectively use the information from your previous claims to help you navigate some of the more challenging nuances of R&D tax relief you had faced before. Certainty of what qualifies allows for a less time-consuming preparation process and a more accurate budgeting for the time and resources invested.
Planning your R&D activity ahead can help you to make better investment decisions by predicting the true cost of the investment and enabling for more accurate cashflow forecasting to allow you to plan your future investment.
Starting your claim early on the planning stage, also allows you to implement a real-time information capture approach, which can potentially increase your claim’s value and deliver a smoother and more efficient claiming process. This enables you to track your R&D expenditures in real-time and supports the pro-active use of the R&D benefit to influence the strategic direction of your live projects.
If that sounds like a good plan for your next financial year, we are happy to discuss your R&D claims now and answer any questions you might have, please contact us.
Tim Walsh CTA MBA – Regional Director RandDTax.