Tax Relief on R & D and Inventions

Immediately after the Daresbury Business Breakfast on the 28 Feb 2014 Ian Rowland of Grant Thornton and Jack Stevenson-Hill of Marks & Clerk presented "Are you minimising your business costs by optimising tax relief on your R&D and inventions?" The presentation covered the Enterprise Investment Scheme ("EIS"), the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme ("SEIS"), Entrepreneurs' Relief, Research and Development Tax Relief and the Patent Box.

The discussion on the Patent Box was particularly timely as it is a year since it came into force. At a similar meeting last year I had asked a number of questions such as what happens to the tax relief if a patent is a revoked? Is all the tax clawed back or is the allowance disallowed from the date of revocation? This year the presenters were able to give me some answers and I was pleased to hear that the general view is that the tax allowed for the time the patent was in force will not be claimed back.

In the audience was an official from HM Revenue & Customs and although he made clear that he could and would say nothing that might bind his department he did not dissent from the speakers' view. After the presentation I got to talk to the official who told me that the Manchester Specialist Unit Large & Complex Business contains most of the Revenue's expertise on the patent box and other tax relief. He did not give me his name and though we exchanged business cards his card contains only the postal address of his unit (which is in Glasgow) and an email address which starts off with the word "randdmanchester". He also gave me to understand that his team look at issues on a case by case basis and are interested in outcomes.

Ian and Jack sent me a copy of their slides which is very interesting and comprehensive. I would be happy to put them on Slideshare and embed them into this blog if they were happy for me to do that. In the meantime I am sending them a copy of this article. If you want to discuss IP and tax I should be happy to talk generally on the subject if you call me on 020 7404 5252 or fill in my contact form. If there are any questions that I can't answer I will pass them on to Anne Fairpo who wrote the book.

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