What is Your R&D Tax Incentive in Hiring an R&D Tax Credit Specialist?

When it comes to any company looking for an R&D tax incentive, how many times in a given week are they getting phone calls from multiple R&D tax credit specialists making mention “we are the best and can help you?”  The feedback I continue to receive from my clientele is that they find it annoying.

For those Companies that are claiming internally, I am almost positive these phone calls annoy you more so. However may I request that you ask yourself “what is the value of hiring a professional firm when I can do this on my own”?

You have your reasons I am sure whether it comes to the cost of the service or a bad experience you had with another so called “specialist”.

My response to the above questions is as follows:

  1. What are the number of hours it takes you and/or your staff to complete your R&D claims?
  2. Are you up to speed with the new changes of the R&D programme? Such as the claim documentation requirements and the new PAYE rules?
  3. Are you 100% positive you are claiming everything you are entitled to? Or even worse, are you claiming costs that you should not be claiming?
  4. What is your confidence level should an HMRC enquiry take place?  
  5. Do you know what changes HMRC are likely to make in 2023?

If the answer to any one of these questions is “no”?. My advice is to consider hiring a specialist, such as RDP Associates (RDP).  Time is money and when it comes to your time. We would take no more than 2 to 3 short meetings to complete the R&D claim. If the situation arises where HMRC looks into your claim, it is part of our service to defend the claim in order to receive the R&D tax incentive.  More importantly, since we are an international company, we work with other countries’ mature R&D tax incentive programmes and see history repeating itself in the UK:

HMRC Are Now Requiring a New R&D Tax Credit Submission Form (rdpassociates.co.uk)

Another incentive for you to consider hiring an R&D specialist is to avoid inadvertently submitting a fraudulent claim(s)

Recently, HMRC released a statistic making mention that they stopped approximately £300 million in fraudulent claim submissions. This is one of the reasons they have and will continue to make changes to the claim submission process which will include documentation requirements.

A 3rd Incentive

A few of our clients, that were initially claiming internally, realized that they were spending too much time working on their R&D claim. Thereby taking away key staff’s time from doing what they were hiring to do. Then as a result, the growth of these companies took longer. They were also leaving somewhere between 25% to 40% of eligible R&D costs on the table. In other cases, R&D claims were submitted to HMRC. Where enquiries subsequently took place and, in one particular case, took over a year to resolve.

Still have doubts? We offer a complementary service to assess and review your most recent R&D claim. This will confirm if it is done properly and also to ensure it is maximised.

Contact us here for a consultation