Back to basics: R&D tax credits

Successive governments have been keen to promote innovation and part of this strategy is to offer tax incentives to companies who carry out research and development. There are two schemes one for SMEs which offers an enhanced deduction and a payable tax credit and one for large companies which offers a lower rate of enhanced deduction with no payable tax credit. There are some differences in the type of expenditure that can be included in the claim and there are differences in the way in which grants are treated. A SME can make a claim under the large company scheme in order to access relief to certain types of expenditure but a large company cannot claim under the SME scheme.