Most business owners have no benchmark for what a good R&D tax adviser looks like. You sign an engagement letter, send over some numbers, a report appears, and some months later a repayment lands. If nothing goes wrong, the process feels fine. The problem is that “nothing has gone wrong yet” is not the same as “this claim would survive an enquiry”.
With HMRC compliance activity at its current level, that distinction matters more than it used to. A claim prepared quickly and cheaply can look identical to one prepared properly — right up until the compliance check letter arrives, when the difference becomes stark and expensive.
Here is a practical checklist. It is not a pitch for our own service; these are the things any competent R&D tax adviser should be doing for you, regardless of who you use.
1. Talk to the people who did the technical work
This is the clearest single signal. R&D tax relief hinges on whether your company sought an advance in science or technology and whether it faced technological uncertainty that a competent professional could not readily resolve. Only your engineers, developers or technical directors can answer these questions.
If your adviser has only ever spoken to your finance team, or has sent over a form for someone to fill in, they are guessing. Ask yourself a blunt question: has anyone from your adviser spoken to the person who solved the hard problem?
2. Tell you when something does not qualify
An adviser who agrees that everything is R&D is not doing you a favour. Part of the job is drawing a defensible line between qualifying work and routine development, commercial iteration or cosmetic change.
You should expect to hear “we would leave that project out” at least occasionally. If you never do, the claim is being built to maximise a fee rather than to withstand scrutiny.
3. Write a technical narrative a technically literate reader would recognise
HMRC now reviews claims via the Additional Information Form, and the technical description carries the argument. A strong narrative identifies the specific uncertainty, explains why existing knowledge or off-the-shelf approaches were insufficient, and describes what was actually attempted — including the routes that failed.
A weak narrative describes the product. Read your own report before you submit it. If it reads like a brochure — with features, benefits, and market positioning — it will not do the job it needs to do.
4. Show you exactly how the costs were built up
You should be able to see which staff were included, at what apportionment, and on what basis. The same applies to subcontractor costs, externally provided workers, consumables, and software.
Apportionment is a judgement, and judgements need supporting reasoning. “60% of the engineering team” is not a methodology. If you cannot follow the arithmetic from your payroll to the claim figure, neither will HMRC.
5. Handle the mechanics properly and on time
Several procedural requirements now run alongside the technical work, and missing one can invalidate an otherwise perfectly good claim:
- Pre-notification, where it applies, within six months of the end of the accounting period
- The Additional Information Form, submitted before the CT600 amendment, with a named company officer and a named agent
- The two-year deadline for the claim itself
These are not optional extras. An adviser who is vague about dates is a risk.
6. Stay with you after submission
Submission is not the end. Claims are queried, repayments are delayed, and HMRC sometimes adjusts without much explanation. You should know who to contact if a compliance check letter arrives, whether enquiry support is included in your fee, and how you will find out if HMRC processes something unexpectedly.
Settle this before you engage, not after. Some firms treat enquiry defence as a separate chargeable service, which is a reasonable commercial choice — but you should know this in advance, not on the day the letter arrives.
7. Be transparent about fees
Contingent percentage fees are common and not inherently wrong, but they create a clear incentive to claim more. Two questions are worth asking: what would the fee be if the claim were reduced by half after an enquiry, and what would happen if HMRC opened a compliance check two years from now?
Our approach
We are an engineering-led practice, and that shapes how we work more than anything else. John and Jason both have technical backgrounds, so the discovery conversation is technical — about what you were trying to achieve, what stood in the way, and why the solution was not obvious. That is also, not coincidentally, the conversation HMRC is interested in.
We keep the burden on your team low: there are no templates to complete, and we can usually extract cost data directly from your accounting software. We monitor your HMRC account after submission, so you hear about repayments and adjustments from us rather than discovering them by chance. We charge a fixed base fee plus a modest success element, which keeps the incentives sensible.
If you already have an adviser and this checklist raises questions, it is worth a conversation. Switching is not always the answer — sometimes the answer is simply asking your current adviser better questions.
Book a no-obligation call with John or Jason at www.vantagernd.co.uk/book, or send us a brief overview of your projects for a free Loom video review at www.vantagernd.co.uk/review-your-project.