Following on from the Chancellor’s announcement in his Autumn Budget the government are consulting on a number of future changes to R&D tax relief. These include:

  • the inclusion of licence payments for datasets and cloud computing costs for data processing and software as two new categories of qualifying expenditure;
  • restricting relief for the cost of carrying out R&D activity subcontracted to third parties to situations where the work is performed in the UK;
  • restricting relief for the cost of employing externally provided workers to situations where the workers are paid through a UK payroll;
  • ensuring that all R&D claims must be made digitally and endorsed by a named senior officer of the company.
  • requiring all companies to obtain advance assurance from HMRC of R&D tax claims

See: Consultation outcome overview: R&D Tax Reliefs: consultation – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)