HMRC Back On Track With R&D Claims

On 15th August, we published an article related to how HMRC was implementing a recovery plan for delayed R&D claims.

Since early Sept, HMRC teams have been working endlessly to accelerate the processing of R&D tax claims and we believe UK businesses should now start to see the rewards of this.

HMRC released the following statement then: 

‘HMRC’s 28 day aim applies to R&D tax credits rather than RDEC. However we are undertaking to bring both payments into that 28 day turnaround time. In order to do that we are taking a number of steps:

• Additional staff are in the process of being moved onto the processing of R&D claims, covering both R&D tax credits and RDEC claims
• We will not be differentiating between R&D tax credits and RDEC claims for processing purposes and will be aiming to get up to date on all claims
• We are in the process of moving claims processing to colleagues in Customer Services Group who, with a wider pool of staff will be able to cope better with seasonal fluctuations in demand.

As a result of these steps, and due to the inclusion of RDEC as well as payable tax credit claims, we are aiming for the overall position being up to date on both R&D tax credits and RDEC claims by 30 September 2019"

As of Monday 30 September, the current date for claims subject to a security check are those received 3 September 2019. Once released companies should allow a further 3-7 days before payment is received.

As always, to keep up to date with HMRC's latest processing times, make sure you bookmark our homepage where we update a rolling grey banner on a weekly basis with latest the processing times for both R&D and RDEC claims.