Claiming R&D Tax Claiming

COMPANIES WITH YE 31 May 2025 MUST NOW PRE-NOTIFY HMRC; AND

COMPANIES WITH YE 31 DECEMBER 2023 HAVE A CLAIM DEADLINE OF 31 DECEMBER 2025 – BUT NO NEED TO MAKE A PRE-NOTIFICATION

YESTAX is UNDERTAKING CLIENT REVIEWS TO ENSURE NO OPPITUNITY OR DEADLINE IS MISSED

Are you an R&D claimant, or a company considering its eligibility to claim R&D and have a 31 December Y-E? If so, you must speak now to your advisor. It’s important you don’t miss your opportunity to claim R&D tax credits where time is invested and money is incurred developing new products or processes. You have until 31 December 2025 to submit your R&D claim for Y-E December 2023.

OR – are you an R&D claimant, or a company considering your eligibility to claim R&D and have a 31 May year-end? If so, you must now consider the pre-notification requirement. No pre-notification MAY mean no claim.  You have until 31 November 2025 to submit your notification.

Due to recent changes in the R&D tax legislation, for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2023, you have to pre-notify HMRC of your intention to make a claim within six months of the end of the period for which you wish to make the R&D claim.

Therefore, for companies with a 31 May 2025 year-end (a popular year-end date) the deadline to submit your notification is 31 November 2025. Don’t invalidate your claim by missing this deadline.

The rules are complicated and to avoid any problems down the line, you should now speak to your advisor to confirm whether a notification is required or not.

The rules

You ONLY need to submit a claim notification form if:

• The company is claiming for the first time; or
• The last claim was made more than 3 years before the claim notification period deadline date for this period.

However, in assessing the above, a previous claim for R&D tax relief is considered not to have been made if:

1. The company claimed R&D tax relief for an accounting period beginning before 1 April 2023 by amending its tax return and the amendment was received on or after 1 April 2023; and/or
2. HMRC rejected the R&D claim by removing it from the company tax return

As a result, many claimant companies are caught out, knowing they have made claims in the past but not properly considering the rules any further, only to then realise there is a problem when their latest claim is rejected (falling foul of these rules).

See the linked article here, which goes into more detail about when a company is required to pre-notify.

Making an Advanced Notification is not an onerous task, but it is a critical step in the R&D claims process. If the deadline is missed, there is no way of rectifying the position; the company simply loses the ability to claim for the period in question.

Accountants: YesTax, at your request, will undertake complimentary reviews of your client list to ensure that no eligible company misses out.

31 December 2025 deadlines

For all companies with December Y-Es, YesTax will review client portfolios and undertake eligibility meetings to assess entitlement and scope to claim and ensure companies who have claims to complete for Y-E 31 December 2023 can aim to meet the claim deadline.

Contact: natalia@yes.tax.

T: 0114 5537850