What Makes an R&D Claim Truly Compliant?

“Compliant” gets used a lot in this industry, often as a word that sounds reassuring without actually meaning very much. I think it's worth being specific about what it actually requires, because a claim that's compliant in a meaningful sense looks quite different to one that's simply been submitted without anything obviously wrong with it.

Technical Assessment That Starts with the Legislation

A compliant claim starts by testing the work against HMRC's own qualifying R&D framework, including the DSIT Guidelines, not against a general sense that the business has been innovative. That means identifying the specific scientific or technological uncertainty, establishing that a competent professional couldn't have readily resolved it using existing knowledge, and being honest when a project doesn't meet that bar.

Evidence That Was Actually There at the Time

Contemporaneous evidence carries far more weight than anything reconstructed after the fact. The most compliant claim is built from records that already existed, whether that's design documentation, testing records, meeting notes or technical correspondence, rather than relying solely on a narrative written from memory months after the project finished.

Legislative Interpretation That's Actually Current

The rules around subcontracting, the merged scheme, the Additional Information Form and pre-notification have all moved. A compliant claim reflects the statutory rules and the DSIT Guidelines as it actually stands, not an approach that was correct a few years ago and simply hasn't been updated since.

Qualifying Expenditure That Matches the Narrative

The financial figures in a claim should map directly onto the activities described in the technical narrative. If the numbers and the story don't clearly connect, that disconnect is exactly the kind of thing that draws scrutiny, and it should be resolved before submission, not discovered afterwards.

Quality Assurance That Actually Happens

None of the above means much without a genuine review before anything goes to HMRC. That means someone other than the person who prepared the claim actually checking it, not as a formality, but as a real test of whether it holds together.

Why I Think About It This Way

Put those five things together and you get a claim that isn't just technically defensible, it's genuinely trustworthy. That's the standard I want every claim we're involved in to meet, not because HMRC might ask, but because it's simply what doing this properly looks like.

Get in touchif you want to talk through how that standard applies to a specific client's situation.