The Government have made recent changes that make it mandatory to have the right documents in place as part of the application form.
If a request for information is made as part of spot-checking of applications, you must produce the documents within 30 days.
The documents they expect to be available for review should your application be flagged for checking may relate to anything from your entire R&D work program – from R&D project eligibility proof through to the hypothesis and experiments conducted and the evidence of these recorded. If you fail to locate the proper evidence or the information within the documents is not considered satisfactory, this will at a minimum flag you as “At-risk” or, worst case, trigger an audit.
So, process-driven record-keeping is essential to avoid tedious searching for information. The above may seem like a lot of work, but the bulk of the above can be done quickly using templates and makes things a lot easier in house. It removes the need to ‘create’ new documents, takes the guesswork out of the process by providing a checklist to work through and, once in place, saves time in the process.
It is also the best way to manage the risk of triggering an audit with missing documentation at application time.
Why don’t you try our Audit Preparation Services, we can review the documentation for compliance, provide templates to ensure language and structure are correct, review your application of core and support R&D and assist you to answer the questions from AusIndustry or the ATO. Find out now!
Download our R&D Tax Incentive Implementation Checklist, which will allow you to assess how well you are keeping your records and what can be improved. By using our checklist, you will start:
- Keeping all the right records to fully claim under the Tax Incentive
- Find out how much more you could claim with the right records
- Review the templates to see how quick and easy it can be to document your claim
- Make it easier for your accountant by being prepared (Benefits you and your accountant)
However, if you are still not sure about what help you can get, book a 10-minute consultation with us, we will see what we can do to help you.