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We are happy to provide you with our R&D Tax Incentive Records Checklist. It is the same comprehensive checklist we use when helping our clients safely maximise the amount they are claiming under the Government scheme or helping them remediate after an audit by the Government. Recap on the R&D Tax Incentive The Australian Government offers rebates on R&D work that meets specific criteria to encourage Australian businesses to innovate. To be eligible to claim,

Catch up on the current R&D Tax Incentive If you are an Australian Pty Ltd business doing work on improving, innovating or inventing new products or services, the Australian Government offers a rebate on the cost of your R&D work. You must be spending more than $20,000 pa, conducting the work in Australia, and you must show that you have created new knowledge. The rebate assessment process is changing The process to claim under this

Catching you up As you know, the R&D Tax Incentive is for businesses conducting innovation and developing new products or services. It’s a self-assessment as part of your application for the rebate. Therefore, you will need records that substantiate your claim. By records, we mean detailed documents and evidence that will satisfy the Government’s requirements. These requirements are stringent and very specific. What to be aware of The Government have made recent changes that make

Quick recap If you are doing innovative work in Australia, and taking advantage of the R&D Tax Incentive, then you are required to keep detailed records relating to: 1.     Product strategy with a project roadmap and new knowledge assessed 2.     R&D project documentation with project hypothesis explained R&D project eligibility proof for core R&D activity documentation R&D project timelines, plans and budgets that have been monitored. 3.     R&D work records that track time and materials as core and

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

Things are changing with the R&D Tax Incentive The changes are focused on the information that you must provide as part of the application. The information needed is stringent, and there is a renewed focus on confirming that you can provide detailed information on the new knowledge (innovation) you are seeking to create, your hypothesis for the new knowledge, and what experiments will be conducted to prove your hypothesis. What else is changing? While the above

Recap If you are doing innovation work with product development or improved systems, the R&D Tax Incentive is a rebate for any eligible work. To be eligible to start with, you must be a Pty Ltd company, spending more than $20,000 pa, conducting the work in Australia, and showing that you have created new knowledge. The catch The catch with this program is that the application process is quite complex and requires you to provide detailed

Repeated Problems With Software Claims There have been calls from various sectors to clarify the eligibility of Software developed under the R&D Tax Incentive Scheme. This is because so many software claims have been reviewed by the Government and deemed ineligible. The main reason for the ineligibility is because those claiming their software development as R&D are misclassifying the work. Agile sprints are not R&D The main reason a software development team misclassifies their work is because they

The application for Research and Development Tax Incentive closes 10 months after the end of each company financial year. For June Year-End Companies Registrations Open: 1st July annually (for the prior year activities undertaken) Registration Close: 10 months after (being the 30th April the following year) Advanced Finding Applications: must be lodged during the financial year the activities are being undertaken. So for a June year-end, the Advanced Finding must be lodged before June 30th

The best way of keeping the right evidence in the future is to create a template-supported system. You don’t need to ‘create’ new documents, take the guesswork out of the process by providing a checklist to work through and, once in place, save time in the process. It is also the best way to manage the risk of triggering an audit with missing documentation at application time. The record-keeping will need to be built into

Some tax agencies can help you advance your refund. When you apply for the R&D Tax Incentive, there is an opportunity for your accountant to advance your tax refund, giving you a cash flow boost of up to 80%. Not only you can get an early tax refund, but also can improve your capital and cash flow position. This allows you to spend more money on R&D and have better budgets. Here is the information

You don’t need to worry about the audit if you have well-managed record-keeping. During an audit, they will ask you to provide evidence of your claim, for example, your project activity list, experimental test plan and results. So, you just need to keep all your records; when they ask, you provide the evidence to them. The way to solve your headaches is to create a system supported by templates. It removes the need to ‘create’