Positive thinking

ALL OF THE measures relating to research and development tax relief contained in the 2006 Budget had already been mentioned in the 2005 Pre-Budget Report and in one case the 2004 Pre-Budget Report. The bulk of the changes are small adjustments to the relief or are changes to the administration of the scheme to try to provide a more consistent treatment of claims for the taxpayer.

Mid-sized companies

The Government intends to implement one of the recommendations of the Cox Review of creativity in business: building on the UK's strengths published on 2 December 2005 that extra support should be given to companies with between 250 and 500 employees which just exceed the limits to claim the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) tax relief. This was first mooted in the 2004 Pre-Budget Report when the Chancellor announced that he would 're-examine the research and development tax...