Generous R&D tax incentives are available to encourage innovation in the UK yet many companies remain unaware of the potential relief available or are sceptical of their ability to make a valid claim.

The tax incentives work by reducing corporation tax for tax-paying companies and are divided into two regimes; one for companies falling within the EU definition of Small and Medium sized Enterprises (‘SMEs and one for all other companies (‘LargeCos’)'.

In March 2006 Deloitte undertook a survey of SMEs across the UK to explore companies’ experiences of the R&D tax relief system. Our aim was to measure actual and potential uptake of the benefit, and to investigate areas of difficulty in claiming the available relief.

In total, we surveyed over 560 companies nationally, spanning a variety of industry sectors.

For more information, download our publication entitled, R&D tax incentives - SMEs fail to optimise (406KB, PDF)