Review of where we are at
If you are claiming under the R&D Tax Incentive, recent changes by Government have made it all the more important to get the paperwork and supporting documentation correct.
Key changes to the application form make it impossible for your R&D Tax Consultant (or yourself) to complete the application form without supporting evidence as follows:
Old Form – Core Activity (3,000 characters)
- Describe the core activity (3,000 characters)
New Form – Core Activity (18,000 characters)
- What was the hypothesis? (4,000 characters)
- What was the experiment, and how did it test the hypothesis? (4,000 characters)
- How did you evaluate or plan to evaluate results from your experiment? (4,000 characters)
- Describe your conclusions (4,000 characters)
- What new knowledge was this core activity intended to produce? (1,000 characters)
- Please explain what sources were investigated, what information was found, and why a competent professional could not have known or determined the outcome in advance (1,000 characters)
This shouldn’t be a surprise to you
The changes noted above should not be a surprise to those already claiming under the scheme, as this information has always been a requirement based on the legislation. It’s just not been necessary to provide this information upfront as part of your application.
We are aware that some companies have not paid close attention to this detail but is easy to quickly align your processes. Our templates and framework are based directly on the legislation and make it very easy for a company to create and maintain the documents required for the new application.
It’s not that hard to align your processes
While the above may look a little daunting, we have dozens of examples of businesses that have put in place processes and all-important templates that literally:
1. Make it easy to complete the necessary documentation
2. Provide a line by line sample content for how to write the documents
3. Easily meet the scientific ‘language’ that the Government is looking for
4. Provide a way to capture ALL possible activity that can be claimed
5. Therefore safely increase the total amount of the claim
Please take a look at these companies that have worked with us.
ABC Filling Beverage Design and Manufacture
“We knew we had room for improvement, and AusIndustry made this very clear. We hadn’t realised how much we were missing in terms of not only making things better and more efficient with the paperwork but also that we were missing additional claims on some of our work.”
Read more …
Coolpac Thermal Packaging
“Correct and accurate record-keeping is the crux of any R&D claim, and George was instrumental in setting that up so that in the future, our application for an R&D grant will flow smoothly. The R&D process manual provided is very long but very professionally put together, and through the workshops, we, as a company, have realised the importance of such thorough record keeping.
We hope that by improving our record keeping we will be able to increase our future claims. They also pointed out to us quite a few things that we were unaware that we could claim as R&D expenses. Very helpful!!”
Read more …
Templates, processes, workshops and audit capabilities
We have a complete set of templates available for download and further support if you wanted help to implement or check how you are applying the templates to your work.
If you would like to talk more about templates, audits or implementation of your R&D program, feel free to book a 10min meeting.
We also, run a regular R&D Discussion Group where you can learn more from both us and other companies leveraging the R&D Tax Incentive and are looking to make the process and implementation as slick as possible.
Other resources
We have several other resources that may be of interest.
> 6 Step R&D Tax Incentive Audit Survival eBook
> Orphaned Legacy Software Rescue and Maintenance eBook
> Take R&D Tax Records Self Assessment, Receive a Free Report
> Learn more: R&D Tax Incentive Compliance Requirements
Let me know how I can help.
Feel free to join one of our Weekly R&D Discussion Group Sessions if you have questions.
Download our R&D Tax Incentive checklist
Please take a look at our other free resources on the Softlogic Solutions website.