About the relief
UK companies doing qualifying R&D can reduce their corporation tax or receive a payable credit. Under the merged scheme (accounting periods starting April 2024) the headline rate is 20% RDEC-style credit — roughly 15–16% net. Loss-making, R&D-intensive SMEs (30%+ of total spend on R&D) can access enhanced support worth up to ~27p per £1 of qualifying spend.
What counts as R&D
- Seeking an advance in science or technology — not just novelty for your business, but for the field
- Resolving technical uncertainty a competent professional couldn't easily solve
- Qualifying costs: staff, software, cloud computing and data, consumables, some subcontracting
Building a genuinely new product, wrestling with scaling problems, novel data pipelines, new materials or processes — much of what technical startups do every day qualifies. Routine styling, content and configuration doesn't.
Eligibility highlights
- UK company within the charge to corporation tax
- Project records that evidence the uncertainty and the work — keep them as you go
- New claimants generally must notify HMRC within 6 months of period end — don't sit on it
Why it's on Fortune: founders routinely leave five figures unclaimed because nobody told them their debugging marathon was R&D. Your Fortune profile already describes what you're building — we flag qualifying activity automatically and remind you before deadlines.
How Fortune helps
- Spot: qualifying activity is flagged from your project descriptions — before the claim window closes.
- Prepare: we structure the technical narrative in HMRC's language: the advance sought, the uncertainties, the work done.
- Stack: claimed properly alongside grants (grant-funded work interacts with the relief) so the two don't cannibalise each other.
Official guidance: HMRC — R&D tax relief ↗