TrueIP_Banners_RD.jpg

The R&D Tax Incentive (R&DTI) entitlement programme encourages eligible companies to engage in commercialisation strategy and the Australian economy.

 

The R&DTI provides a generous tax offset for eligible projects in the claimant’s financial year. However, a critical part of the legislative definition of an eligible project and its financial year activity(s) (for tax purposes) is requiring that a claimant must seek to resolve a technical unknown via new knowledge.

TrueIP has developed a Knowledge Assessment Search Report modelled on AusIndustry’s Record-Keeping and R&D Planning guidance, as attached. As R&D tax incentive (RDTI) claimants must be trying to do something that a competent professional in that field cannot know or determine in advance of experimentation. If others have successfully done what the claimant is trying to do, the project may not be eligible for the R&D tax incentive (unless the knowledge of how to do it was still a trade secret).

The test is not that no-one in your business knows how to achieve the goal, or no one in Australia has done it before, but rather that the knowledge is not globally publicly and freely available.

TrueIP’s R&DTI Knowledge Assessment Search investigates:

  • Global patent landscape incorporating top 10 competitors, licensing partnerships;

  • Knowledge similarities and uniqueness; and,

  • Searching non-patent references: Global academic libraries. Industry referencing i.e. Software: Slack, Github, Global Associations, etc.. Trade journals and Scientific peer review sites.

TrueIP’s R&DTI Knowledge Assessment search could be provided as an assurance tool, for a claimant, to communicate the process to AusIndustry and/or ATO that reasonable steps have been taken to mitigate knowledge risk in a claim. TrueIP has sample reports available that provide an indicative rather than complete set of the results. In a paid search, TrueIP would run a broader range of queries reporting on more relevant results. Hence, providing a topicality of the knowledge and more relevant documents published over time.

 

FEE INDICATION: R&DTI claimants would be from $2,695* +gst including: R&DTI Knowledge Assessment Search Report; an initial virtual meeting to define the uniqueness and knowledge set parameters; and, final virtual discussion on the output.

*Subject to change without notice and an indicative fee before scoping.