Clients with December 2024 year-ends: Pre-Notify NOW!
Are you an R&D claimant with a December year-end? If so, it’s critical that you now consider the pre-notification requirement. No pre-notification could mean no claim!
Due to recent changes in the R&D tax legislation, for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2023, you now have to pre-notify HMRC of your intention to claim within six months of the end of the period for which you wish to make the R&D claim.
As such, for companies with a 31 December 2024 year-end (an extremely popular year-end date) the deadline to submit your notification is the end of this month – 30 June 2025. Don’t invalidate your claim by missing this new administrative task.
The rules are complicated; to avoid any problems down the line, you should speak to your advisor now to confirm whether a notification is required or not.
The rules
You ONLY need to submit a claim notification form if:
- The client 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:
- 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
- HMRC rejected the R&D claim by removing it from the company tax return
As a result, many claimant companies are being caught out, knowing that they have made claims in the past but have not properly considered the rules any further, only to then realise upon discovering that the latest claim has been rejected.
Our previous article, linked here, 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 now a critical step as part of 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.
YesTax is happy to undertake complimentary reviews to ensure that no eligible company misses out.
Get in touch at hello@yes.tax.
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