R&D Tax Relief Claims - additional forms required from August 2023 onwards

Information required by HMRC before submitting claims for all R&D tax relief

1. For accounting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2023, you should check if you need to submit a claim notification form to notify HMRC in advance of your claim. A claim notification form should be submitted for R&D relief or expenditure credits claimed in periods starting on or after 1 April 2023 if:

• you’re claiming for the first time

• your last claim was made more than 3 years before the last date of the claim notification period.

 The claim notification form has to be submitted 6 months after the period end in which the claim is made.

2. From 8 August 2023 you must submit an additional information form to support your claim. Find out how to send the information and what to provide when you submit detailed information before you claim R&D tax relief.

The only way to access these forms and process the submission of data is via HMRC's online portal. Currently, software vendors do not have access to the forms to enable submission via other systems.

Additional boxes to complete within the CT600

There are two new boxes related to R&D claims and are for notifying HMRC whether the required online forms have been submitted. If the forms are not submitted before the CT600 is filed, then HMRC will ignore the R&D claims, notify the taxpayer the required forms have not been completed and request an amended submission after the forms have been completed. This will cause a delay in receiving the R&D claim.

Box 657 within the enhanced expenditure section of the CT600 should be ticked to confirm that an additional information form has been submitted. The additional information form has to be submitted for all R&D claims, not just enhanced expenditure claims.

Box 656 is also within the enhanced expenditure section of the CT600 and should be ticked to confirm that a claim notification form has been submitted.

Claims for RDEC only - HMRC submission error

HMRC are aware there is an issue currently with the validation that prevents customers from completing both boxes 655 (Claims made by a large companies) and 657 (Additional information form) on the CT600, to signify that the additional information form has been submitted by a large company.

Leaving box 655 blank results in a filing error : Error 9283 — Box 655 can only be completed if at least one of the boxes 670 or 680 is greater than 0 (zero)

Workaround: As detailed on HMRC's CT online service page, if you receive this error, leave box 657 blank but ensure that the additional information form has been submitted.