R&D tax relief: How to protect businesses from poor advice

There has been something of a series of Taxation articles discussing the many problems which continue to dog research and development (R&D) tax relief. Herein lies the issue. Our industry has spent enough time discussing the issues at hand. The time has now come for action.

For businesses in the UK R&D tax relief is playing a vital role in recovery efforts. Many businesses have found that the pandemic itself has triggered R&D projects from developing new products to digital transformation. Others have benefited from the additional funding to ease cashflow issues as they face the numerous uncertainties that the pandemic has brought (HMRC for its part has continued to process claims efficiently throughout).

That said I have watched with a growing alarm as R&D tax advice has slipped into increasingly choppy moral and professional waters. I am losing count of instances of companies suffering the...