Tax refund for R&D expenditures – collect your part!
New guidelines regarding tax refund for R&D expenditures came into force on 1st of January 2013, which involved an increase from 8 % to 10 % and a new way of application and implementation.
In order to apply for the R&D tax refund, all ventures liable for taxation are obliged to submit an expert survey to the Austrian Research & Promotion Agency (FFG), which proofs requirements of the necessary pre-requisites regarding research and experimental development.
Time and administrative efforts for application of R&D tax refund have indeed increased, however, the advantages of the new R&D tax refund are convincing:
- You can also apply for the R&D tax refund in case of a loss!
- In case of a positive decision R&D tax refund will be applied to your tax-debit-account!
If your company actively participates within the field of research or experimental development you may get back 10 % of your R&D expenses in form of the R&D tax refund from your tax authorities. Within the process, as well costs of in-house R&D activities as contract research will be admitted.
However, regarding the question which purchases and expenditures are possible for R&D within the framework of the R&D tax refund application, certain requirements have to be fulfilled! The following expenditures regarding R&D serve as an assessment basis:
- Investment costs
- Overhead costs
- Labour costs
- Costs for quality controls
- Costs for trials, test runs, etc.
- Travel expenditures
- …
Talk to us – we are pleased to analyse your R&D expenditures in order to generate a maximum of R&D tax refund. Thereby we stick to the following process, which already proved successful in previous projects:
m27 provides the following services:
- Higher allocable basis for the previous year (costs and projects)
- "lift" of unused potential (especially) in the overheads!
- clear and comprehensible identification, selection and structuring of projects attributable to the Company (Note: a maximum of 20 projects and project priorities)
- during fiscal year construction of financial structure (for the current business year)
- Documentation necessary to collect data during the year. Important here is the quality of data and a simple and efficient "modus operandi" for registration of the year resulting data. It is also important to make sure and preserve with a possible tax audit, a sure foundation and "carrying capacity" of the documentation.
- Technical due-diligence
- Set-up of the research agenda(s) regarding ex-ante (FFG) and ex-post (tax authorities) grants & subsidies, respectively tax refund.
- Where is the “master-mind” located?
- Contract research vs. buying services external?
- “mother-daughter” relationships or even better: “daughter-mother”?
- In-house research vs. contract research
- Selection of suitable (promising) R&D project(s)
- Preparation of project description, which especially incorporates technical basics and aspects of the project(s)
- Work on the costs associated with basics of the various topics
- Support for documentation of the various projects
