Should I use my accountant for my R&D claim?

Any accountant who submits Corporation Tax return can technically submit your R&D claim for you, but that doesn’t mean that they have the experience necessary to do so.

It can be likened to seeing your GP because your knee has been hurting  the GP will be able to give you some advice regarding your knee which of course may solve your problem, however the chances are they will refer you to a consultant who specialise in knees.

So your accountant is your GP and an R&D specialist is the consultant.

Actually there are many accountants who submit accurate R&D claims and do so very well, but all too often crucial parts of the claim are missed out and therefore clients are missing out on money they are entitled to. 

In a lot of cases business owners find out about R&D tax credits from someone else in business, they then ask their accountant (who hasn’t previously even mentioned R&D) whether they can claim, the accountant then decides that they had better offer to submit a claim as they are afraid of losing their client.

If your accountant is going to submit an R&D claim for you ask them some questions before they do:

-       How many claims have they submitted?

-       How many were successful?

-       Will they be writing a full comprehensive report to be sent to HMRC ? ( this is very important so that HMRC don’t challenge the claim in the future)

-       Have they submitted claims for companies like yours before?

If you don’t feel comfortable with their answers, don’t be afraid to use an R&D specialist

At Research and Development Tax Ltd we are a team of accountants who specialise in R&D claims and we are very proud of our 100% success rate.  Email [email protected]