Are you required to submit a Claim Notification to HMRC when filing an R&D tax credit claim?

From 1 April 2023, a range of new reforms to the R&D tax credit scheme were introduced, including several measures to prevent abuse of the R&D tax credit scheme. One of these is the requirement to submit a Claim Notification to ensure your R&D tax credit claim is valid. 

Not everyone is required to submit a notification. HMRC has proposed that it should be mandatory for:

• Companies planning to submit R&D tax claims for the first time.
• Companies that have not submitted a claim for 3 years or more.

To ensure you do not miss your chance to claim R&D tax relief, we’ve put together some key questions to help you prepare.

If it is your first time claiming R&D tax relief and your accounting period starts on or after 1 April 2023, then you will need to submit a Claim Notification.

Additionally, if your company has not made an R&D tax relief claim in any of the previous 3 calendar years, and your accounting period starts on or after 1 April 2023, then you will also need to submit a Claim Notification.

For accounting periods starting on or after 1 April 2023, companies must submit a Claim Notification form for their R&D claim to be valid.

To submit a Claim Notification form, the earliest date you can begin is on the first day of your accounting period.

The latest deadline for this submission comes 6 months after the end of that same accounting period.

Note that if a company makes its R&D claim before the deadline for submitting a notification, they do not have to also submit a Claim Notification form.

For your Claim Notification to be valid, you must provide:

• The company’s Unique Tax Reference (UTR) number must be correct and correlate with that on your CT600.
• Contact details of the main internal R&D contact at the company – this is the person from the business responsible for the claim.
• Contact details of any agent involved in the R&D claim.
• The agent reference number (if you have one).
• The period of accounting start and ends dates, which must correlate with your tax computations.
• Start and end dates of the accounting period you’re claiming R&D for only – again; this must be correct and align with that on the CT600

We’re here to help. Over 1000 UK companies have trusted EmpowerRD’s R&D platform and specialists to help them build optimised, compliant R&D tax claims.

Book a call with one of our team to see how we can help you.