R&D Tax Relief Claim Compliance Check

HMRC has merged the old SME and RDEC schemes into a single Research and Development Expenditure Credit for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2024, alongside a separate, more generous scheme for R&D-intensive loss-making SMEs. Every claim, regardless of company size, must now be supported by a mandatory Additional Information Form (AIF) submitted to HMRC before the tax return, setting out the qualifying projects, costs and the science or technology advance being sought. Claims made without a valid AIF are automatically rejected, and first-time claimants (or those who haven’t claimed in the previous three years) must also submit a separate claim notification form within six months of their accounting period end. The changes were introduced alongside a sustained HMRC compliance crackdown on R&D claims following widespread abuse of the old SME scheme, with a dedicated R&D anti-abuse unit now checking a significant proportion of claims and routinely opening enquiries into claims that lack contemporaneous project and cost records. Businesses that treat R&D relief as a routine accounting exercise — rather than gathering technical evidence of genuine scientific or technological uncertainty as the work happens — are increasingly having claims delayed, reduced or rejected outright, with penalties possible where HMRC finds a claim was submitted carelessly.

This check reviews your R&D tax relief claim against HMRC’s merged scheme rules — covering the Additional Information Form, claim notification deadlines, and the record-keeping HMRC expects to see under its increased compliance checks.