Welcome to Saving Point’s Research and Development Tax Incentive Online Application: Expert Review Process.
Saving Point is an independent advisory firm specialising in assisting businesses with government grants, incentives, and concessions. We hold a specialist R&D Tax Registration Certificate with the Australian Tax Office, administered by the Tax Practitioners Board. Our depth of experience acting on behalf of businesses in the engineering, manufacturing and the ITC sectors, allows us to apply the most effective compliance methodologies available whilst achieving maximum financial returns for the client.
Qualified consultants will utilise their collective decades of experience and latest best practices to review your application and offer advice, corrections or request additional information to enhance your claim, giving your business confidence that a compliant claim has been submitted and maximising your entitlement from the program.
The R&D Online Application Form consists of four sections. Each section includes instructions that will help you with completion.
We will review up to two (2) Projects, the details of which you will fill out on the following pages. The service fee for this service is a one-off A$1,450 (+GST), irrespective of the magnitude of the claim. Once you complete the Online Form, you will be prompted to a secure payment gateway page.
We use the “AutoSaves” feature which will automatically save the form's field values locally (browser local storage) and ensures that you do not lose any data while completing the Online Application.
If you accidentally close or reload the browser while filling out the form, you will not lose any data. Please note that you need to use the same browser in order for the saved field values to autofill in the form.
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Please be aware that when submitting the official form to Austrade that the declaration must be made by a person authorised by the R&D entity. This person may be:
• an officer of the R&D entity with authority to complete this application or
• a registered tax agent that has written authorisation to act on the R&D entity’s behalf in this matter.The R&D Entity Contact person needs to be an employee of the applicant company to validly register their Research and Development. It cannot be a tax agent of the company.
The nominated contact is the person authorised to provide any further information, and to receive correspondence, in relation to this application on behalf of the R&D entity.
If the nominated contact is a third party representative, please note that it is an offence (subject to a civil penalty) for a person to provide a service that is a 'tax agent service', where that person is not a registered tax agent (refer section 50-5 of Tax Agent Services Act 2009), other than where the service is a legal service in some circumstances.
Postal Address
Saving Point’s Expert R&D Application Review form has been developed to simplify the claim process.
You will be prompted to enter information about your business and the R&D activities carried out, our experts will review the information and prepare your R&D Tax Incentive Application.
If you have already prepared AusIndustry’s R&D Tax Incentive Application, please upload the document here for review by our experts, otherwise, please click next.
In this section you should choose the most recently completed income year in which the R&D activities were conducted. You must apply for registration within 10 months after the end of the income year in which the activities were conducted. Applications received after the deadline mwill not normally be accepted. Further information on 'late applications' can be found in the Registration Information Sheet.
A standard income period runs from 1 July to 30 June. Only companies with a substituted accounting period approved by the ATO may register activities for a non-standard income period. You can find information and forms for substituted accounting periods at the ATO website.
Please be aware that the R&D Entity’s income period is for the entire income period being applied for, not from when the company began undertaking R&D or became incorporated.
R&D Entity DetailsNote: Trusts are generally not eligible R&D entities. The definition of R&D entities does extend to corporations (including incorporated companies) acting in the capacity of trustee for a public trading trust, but not to trustees of any other type of trust.
This section asks for information about the R&D entity applying for registration.
For the purposes of this form the term ‘applicant’ refers to the ‘R&D entity’. If a tax agent is acting on behalf of a R&D entity, they should include their details as the nominated contact person at the end of the form under the Applicant Details.
Only a ‘R&D entity’ (or a registered tax agent with written authorisation to act on behalf of a R&D entity) can apply to register R&D activities.
If you are part of a consolidated or multi-entry consolidated (MEC) group, only the head company of the group may apply to register R&D activities. The head company must register R&D activities performed by any member of the group.
You are a R&D entity if you are a body corporate that is:
• incorporated under an Australian law or
• incorporated under foreign law but is an Australian resident for income purposes or
• incorporated under foreign law and
o a resident of a country with which Australia has a double tax agreement, including a definition of ‘permanent establishment’ and
o carrying on business in Australia through a permanent establishment as defined in the double tax agreement (more information on permanent establishments is available on the ATO website).
Trusts are generally not eligible entities. The exception is if they are a body corporate acting in the capacity of trustee for a public trading trust.
You are not eligible to register R&D activities for the R&D Tax Incentive if you:
• are a non-incorporated entity (such as a sole trader, partnership or most trusts)
• are a corporate limited partnership or
• are an exempt entity (because your entire income is exempt from income tax).
If you are only partly controlled by one or more exempt entities, you are still eligible to apply. You may wish to contact the ATO to confirm your eligibility.
You should contact the ATO if you are unsure about whether you are an R&D entity.
Subsidiary Member Details
In this section enter the details of all subsidiaries that performed R&D activities that are to be registered in this application
For foreign corporations eligible to apply, their main business address will be the address of their permanent establishment where they carry on business in Australia.
Main Business Address Post Office Boxes (e.g. PO Box 100) are not acceptable as the Main Business Address. Please provide the actual location address of the applicant. Please ensure that capital letters are only used as the first letter of words in the applicant's address.
Main Postal Address
Information sought in this section is used to assist AusIndustry’s compliance review activities and the gathering of statistics for programme evaluation purposes.
Some information sought here is also required by the Industry Research and Development Regulations 2011 (the Regulations).
Aggregated Turnover: is the sum of the annual turnover for all of the following:
• the R&D entity
• any entity connected with the R&D entity
• any entity affiliated with the R&D entity.
Any dealings between these entities are excluded.
An entity's annual turnover is the total ordinary income it derived in the income year in the ordinary course of carrying on its business activities. This amount does not include GST.
For non-grouped R&D entities their aggregated turnover will simply be their annual turnover derived in the income year (excluding GST). Further information is available from the ATO website including the meaning of connected and affiliated entities.
Taxable income or loss: This is the R&D entity’s taxable income or loss for the most recent completed income year. Losses should be shown as negative figures.
Total number of employees: This is the total number of employees on the R&D entity’s payroll at the end of the period covered by this application including working directors, partners, proprietors, full time, part time, and casual staff. For consolidated groups, this will be the total employee numbers for the entire group.
Number of employees engaged in R&D: This is the full time equivalent (FTE) number of staff (including working directors, partners, proprietors, full time, part time, and casual staff) employed by the R&D entity on research and development in the income year covered by this application. For employees that do not work full time, calculate their fraction of a full time load and incorporate them into your calculation on a pro-rata basis. For example, a part-time employee that works for half of the hours of a full-time employee would be entered into the calculation as 0.5.
For consolidated groups, this will be the total FTE number of staff that worked for all the relevant subsidiaries who performed R&D activities included in this application. Estimates are only acceptable if actual numbers are not available.
Export Sales: This is the R&D entity’s total revenue from export sales for the income year covered by this application as reported in the company’s business activity statement provided to the ATO. The total revenue for the entire income year should be included, and this may require a company to add up the individual export sale amounts provided in their periodic business activity statements for the income year.
In this section, enter zero only if this is the actual figure for the field, otherwise enter an estimated amount if the actual figures are not available.
For non-consolidated R&D entities whose shares are all held beneficially by individuals, it is unlikely that you will have an ultimate holding company.
However, if you are part of a consolidated or multi-entry consolidated (MEC) group, it is likely that you will have an ultimate holding company. A company is an “ultimate holding company” if it has majority ownership of or controlling interests in the other companies in the group. The ultimate holding company may be incorporated in a country other than Australia. More information can be found on the ASIC website and the Corporations Act 2001 where the term ‘ultimate holding company’ is defined.
Information in this section should provide an understanding of:
· The reasons for undertaking the project
· The new knowledge you are seeking to develop in underrating the project
In the event of a review of R&D activities, this section will assist the administering bodies to assess the eligibility of R&D activities. Only projects assessed to be eligible core and supporting activities should be included.
Information sought in this section identifies if a Research Service Provider (RSP) or Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) conducted or will conduct the core or supporting activities. This information is required by the programme’s Regulations.
RSPs are entities approved by Innovation Australia that have appropriate scientific or technical expertise and resources to perform R&D on behalf of R&D entities or groups of R&D entities. More information on RSPs, including a list of RSPs registered by Innovation Australia is available on AusIndustry’s website. Information on CRCs is available at their website.
You will also be asked to identify if other organisations, unrelated to the R&D entity for tax purposes, have carried out part of the project. This information assists in understanding the extent to which activities may have been conducted for or by another entity as well as whether a RSP or CRC was involved.
The entities whom you may have collaborated with could include one or more of the following:
• a CRC (refer to Cooperative Research Centre website for a list of current CRCs);
• a RSP (refer to AusIndustry website for a list of registered RSPs);
• another type of publicly funded research organisation (that is not an RSP);
• another type of private research organisation (that is not an RSP);
• another collaborative arrangement which does not involve any of the entities listed above, for example a joint venture arrangement.
Note: R&D entities are only entitled to a tax offset for R&D activities conducted ‘for’ itself and not – to a significant extent – for some other entity. This requirement is intended to limit claims to cases where the entity is a major benefactor from its expenditure on those activities. Determining whether the entity is the major benefactor can be assessed by considering who:
• ‘effectively owns’ the know-how, intellectual property or other similar results arising from the entity’s expenditure on the R&D activities;
• has appropriate control over the way the R&D activities are conducted;
• bears the financial burden of carrying out the R&D activities.
You should only seek to register those activities for which you are satisfied the R&D entity is the major benefactor. Further information is available on the ATO website, including in the ATO Research and development tax incentive – for whom are the R&D activities conducted? fact sheet. If you are still uncertain on this issue, you should contact the ATO.
This section asks for information about the expenditure associated with the project. This information is required by the programme’s Regulations and also assists AusIndustry in performing its compliance review activities. Information on expenditure is sought for the overall project, and then specifically in relation to core and supporting R&D activities.
For R&D entities who are paying a levy or contribution to a RSP, information is required on:
• the amount of levies used for providing services in relation to R&D activities;
• the apportionment of the levies between core and supporting R&D activities as reported to the R&D entity by the levy collecting RSP.
If you are uncertain about either of these two requirements, you should contact your levy collecting RSP. Levy collecting RSPs refers to organisations that:
• collect a levy from their contributors (mainly companies within a particular industry sector) to fund the provision of services in relation to R&D activities;
• do so under a contract or memorandum of understanding with the Australian Government or a State or Territory Government; and
• are registered as an RSP for the R&D Tax Incentive.
Project Expenditure
In this section you will be asked to identify:
• all core R&D activities that you conducted in the income year for this application; and
• any previously registered or future core R&D activity related to a supporting R&D activity that you intend to register in this application.
The activities listed here must meet the definition of core R&D activities.
Core R&D activities are defined as experimental activities:
• whose outcome cannot be known or determined in advance on the basis of current knowledge, information or experience but can only be determined by applying a systematic progression of work that:
o is based on principles of established science;
o proceeds from hypothesis to experiment, observation and evaluation, and leads to logical conclusions; and
• that are conducted for the purpose of generating new knowledge (including new knowledge in the form of new or improved materials, products, devices, processes or services).
Some activities are specifically excluded from being core R&D activities. A full list of these activities can be found in AusIndustry’s online Customer Information Guide. If your activity is on this list, it cannot be registered as core R&D activities but you may consider whether it is eligible as supporting R&D activities.
Your activity description should provide sufficient and relevant information to allow AusIndustry and the ATO to understand what you actually did
You will also be asked to identify any core R&D activities that relate to a supporting R&D activity that you will be registering in this application. For example, where the core R&D activities occurred in a previous income year, or are planned to occur in a future income year, you will need to specify the title of the core R&D activity and its start and end date.
Note: if the core R&D activity took place in a previous income year, it is a requirement that the activity was registered with AusIndustry. If the core R&D activity was registered under the R&D Tax Concession, you will need to ensure that the activity also meets the R&D Tax Incentive definition of a core R&D activity. You cannot register a supporting R&D activity if its related core R&D activity has not been registered previously or does not meet the definition of core R&D activity under the R&D Tax Incentive. Should you wish to provide more information, you can include attachments to this form
If subject to a compliance review, you will be asked for more detailed information about the core R&D activities yet to occur.
Supporting Activity
This application should only include supporting R&D activities conducted in the income year covered by this application. Supporting R&D activities are activities directly related to core R&D activities.
However, if an activity:
• produces or is directly related to producing goods or services; or
• is excluded from being a core R&D activity.
Then the activity is a supporting R&D activity only if it is undertaken for the dominant purpose of supporting core R&D activities.
Supporting activity description: This should describe what the R&D entity actually did within the supporting activity. This should include the main actions or steps that were performed so that AusIndustry can understand the scope and timing of the activity.
Dominant purpose: Activities may be conducted for more than one purpose. If the activity falls under either of the two categories described above, it must satisfy the dominant purpose requirement. Dominant purpose refers to a purpose that is the prevailing or most influential purpose for conducting an activity. To be eligible the most influential purpose of the activity must be to support the core R&D activities rather than to achieve a commercial or production purpose.
The mere fact that certain activities are necessary in order for core R&D activities to occur does not mean that the activities meet the dominant purpose test.
The online Customer Information Guide (see section ‘What is the meaning of dominant purpose’) provides guidance on the factors to consider in determining whether your supporting R&D activity meets the dominant purpose requirement.
If the activities fail the dominant purpose test, they cannot be registered.
Directly related: If the activities do not fall under either of the above categories, they only need to be ‘directly related’ to core R&D activities. This means they must have a direct, close and relatively immediate relationship with the core R&D activities.
If you are selected for a compliance review, you may be asked to provide more information to substantiate your assessment that the supporting R&D activity meets the dominant purpose or directly related requirement.
Congratulations, you have successfully completed the R&D Online Application form! You can print your form and review it. After completing the payment and submitting the form you will receive a confirmation email. One of our dedicated R&D experts will review the information and provide advice or request additional information needed to complete your application.