R&D Tax Incentive Consultants and Registered Tax Agents

A law firm and a
registered tax agent, in one place

This is the part that makes Lawnch different from every other R&D consultant on the Gold Coast, and from every other commercial law firm.

We are a registered tax agent. Most R&D consultancies are not law firms, so they cannot advise on the contracts, IP ownership and structuring that determine whether your R&D expenditure is even claimable. Most law firms are not tax agents, so they cannot lodge.

Sofia Braybrook heads our R&D and Grants practice and has spent nine years securing government funding for Australian companies through the R&D Tax Incentive and the Export Market Development Grant. She works alongside our commercial lawyers, which means the technical claim, the contractor agreements, the IP position and the company structure are all handled by the same team.

The most common reason a claim fails at review is not bad science. It is a contract that gave the IP to someone else, or a structure that put the expenditure in the wrong entity.

How do I know if my business can claim?

There are three eligibility criteria:

1. You are an Australian company. Some exceptions apply to overseas entities in specific circumstances.
2. You are undertaking eligible R&D activities.
3. You have at least $20,000 in eligible R&D expenditure in the income year.

The R&D Tax Incentive is not industry specific. It is open to any company running experiments to develop something new or improved where the outcome could not be known in advance. We have run claims for software, manufacturing, food and beverage, agtech, medtech, construction methods and engineering.

What counts as an eligible R&D activity

Activities are either core or supporting. A core activity is experimental work whose outcome cannot be determined in advance and which is conducted to generate new knowledge. A supporting activity is directly related work that enables the core activity to happen.

Knowing which of your activities is which, and articulating them in the language the program guidelines expect, is where claims are won and lost. This is the whole job.

What expenses can be claimed

Expenditure attributable to eligible R&D activities, which commonly includes:

• Salaries and wages for staff working on R&D
• Contractor fees for R&D work
• Software development costs
• Prototyping, product testing and formulation activities
• Cost of materials consumed in R&D
• A proportion of overheads including rent, utilities and administration

R&D conducted on the Gold Coast and anywhere in Australia is claimable. Overseas activities are generally not permitted, though an Overseas Finding may be available where the work genuinely cannot be conducted in Australia, for example, where the required climate does not exist here.

What we do

• Eligibility assessment before you spend money on a claim that will not fly
• Technical documentation and activity descriptions written to the program guidelines
• Expenditure calculation and apportionment
• Registration with AusIndustry and lodgement of the R&D schedule
• Contemporaneous record-keeping systems so next year’s claim is easier than this one
• Review and audit support if AusIndustry or the ATO come asking
• Contract and IP review, so your R&D expenditure is actually yours to claim
• Advance and Overseas Findings where the position needs certainty, and
• Wider grants advisory including the Export Market Development Grant