UK and International Tax news

HMRC Publishes Draft Guidance On R&D Changes

Wednesday 18th January 2023

HMRC has published draft guidance ahead of the implementation of reforms to the R&D tax relief schemes on 1 April 2023. The guidance includes clarification of technical aspects of the reforms, how they will work in practice and includes a list of the additional information that will be required for claims.

In the Autumn 2021 Budget, the government announced reforms to R&D tax relief, including expanding the scope of qualifying expenditure to include data and cloud costs, to refocus support towards innovation in the UK, and to target abuse and improve compliance. Following stakeholder feedback, the Spring Statement 2022 announced further detail on these measures.

In particular, the government has recognised that there are cases where it is necessary to undertake R&D outside of the UK, and overseas subcontracted expenditure and the costs of overseas externally provided workers can still qualify where there are material factors such as geography, environment, population or other conditions that are not present in the UK and are required for the research, requiring the expenditure to take place outside of the UK, such as deep ocean research, or where there are regulatory or other legal requirements for activities to take place outside of the UK, including clinical trials.

Further reforms have since been announced, including bringing pure mathematics research within scope of the reliefs, and data and cloud computing as qualifying costs.

Draft legislation for these measures was published for comment in July 2022 and final legislation is expected to be included in the 2022-23 Finance Bill.

Draft guidance on the reforms has now been published by HMRC and this covers overseas expenditure, data licences and cloud computing services, notification of claims, mathematics, and additional information requirements.

Overseas Expenditure

For accounting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2023, for both the SME R&D scheme and the RDEC scheme, to be qualifying expenditure, expenditure on payments to subcontractors is required to be UK expenditure, or to be qualifying overseas expenditure. This condition applies to the activities of the subcontractor, being the person being paid to carry out the work.

To be qualifying expenditure, expenditure on payments for externally provided workers must be subject to PAYE and NICs, unless it is qualifying overseas expenditure.

Qualifying overseas expenditure is expenditure on R&D undertaken outside the UK, where three conditions apply being (i) where conditions necessary for the R&D are not present in the UK, (ii) the conditions are present in the location where the R&D is undertaken, and (iii) it would be wholly unreasonable to replicate the conditions in the UK.

Data Licences and Cloud Computing Services

From 1 April 2023, data licence and cloud computing services costs can be qualifying expenditure when employed in activities which directly contribute to the resolution of scientific or technological uncertainty.

Where data or cloud services are used for multiple purposes within the business HMRC will expect a reasonable apportionment between different functions. These may include staff hours used, number of licences used, a ratio of R&D data storage to non-R&D data storage.

It will be important to keep evidence to support any apportionments. A strong source of evidence would be a real-time record that included detail of the person accessing the data or service, the length of time accessed, and the reason for the access.

Claim Notification

From 1 April 2023, some taxpayers will need to submit a Claim Notification form for their R&D claim to be valid, including first time R&D claimants and those claimants who have not made an R&D claim in any of the previous three calendar years.

Mathematics

There is currently a limitation potentially preventing claims for advances in mathematics which can mean that activities relating to pure mathematics may not fall within the scope of R&D tax relief.

From 1 April 2023,  the BEIS guidelines will make it clear that activities relating to pure mathematics will meet the definition and will be eligible for R&D tax reliefs.

Additional Information

For accounting periods starting on or after 1 April 2023, R&D tax relief claims must be accompanied by Additional Information forms.

 

If you would like more detail on the HMRC guidance including the additional information requirements, please contact Keith Rushen on 0207 486 2378.

 

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