Have you considered whether you are entitled to claim the R&D Tax Incentive? The R&D Tax Incentive is available across a wide variety of fields, and generally involves activities conducted by a company whose purpose is to generate new knowledge.

In order to claim the R&D Tax Offset, a company needs to meet the following requirements:-

• The taxpayer is an eligible R&D entity;

• The taxpayer has conducted eligible R&D activities.

Where the taxpayer has an Aggregated Turnover of less than $20 million, it would be entitled to a Refundable Tax Offset of 43.5% of any identifiable eligible deductions (provided the taxpayer has eligible deductions in excess of $20,000). In addition, the taxpayer is no longer entitled to claim a deduction in relation to any amounts representing any eligible R&D deductions. This results in the taxpayer effectively obtaining a 16.0% tax benefit in relation to the eligible R&D deductions, as the loss of the 27.5% tax savings on eligible R&D deductions is off-set by the 43.5% refundable R&D tax offset.

The eligibility requirements for the R&D tax offset are discussed in greater detail on the business.gov.au website at the following link.

The deadline for lodging an application for registration is ten months after the end of a company’s income year. For example, a taxpayer with an income year ending 30 June 2019, must lodge its registration application with AusIndustry by 30 April 2019.

You may wish to engage the services of an R&D consultant to assist with determining whether you are eligible and assisting with the calculations for the tax-offset.