While we cannot guess what the long term effects to the business will be, at the moment, we are not seeing too much disruption.  All employees are working from home and to a more flexible schedule to allow for childcare etc but we’ve each settled into our own pattern that ensures both business and home needs are met without an adverse effect to our mental health.  We are reviewing this periodically and adjusting as required.

Changes of note are:

*Some clients who have had to close down operations are understandably worried about paying our invoices but we are lucky they have been upfront with us and we have offered extensions, payments plans or other measures which are fair to both sides.

*Some clients are finding they have much more time on their hands to focus on R&D tax relief and so we are compiling these claims earlier than we usually would.

Possible changes we are aware of:

*HMRC processing times may lengthen.  This is a time of year that there is likely to be a backlog anyway so we don’t know how the pandemic will affect this even further.  HMRC claim to be meeting their KPIs in terms of processing times in all but a small number of cases and we haven’t yet seen evidence to the contrary.

*Many future R&D claims are likely  to be affected by the furlough of staff who obviously won’t be undertaking qualifying R&D activities during this time.

*The Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme is a notified state aid and so could have an impact on future R&D claims if the loan is specific to R&D activity.

If you would like any further detail or have questions on anything R&D related, please get in touch via [email protected] or 0330 660 0474.

Posted: 14 Apr 2020