Originally Posted by
elZorro
I'm disappointed with your opinions, FP and UU. I did notice accountancy firms on the web saying the R&D tax credits were difficult to do, best leave it to them. Well, if you have a decent cashbook with plenty of categories, it's not that hard. And no-one understands the R&D projects more than the staff and supervisor or owner of the business. By the time we totalled up what we'd done in a year that fitted the criteria, we were pretty proud of the work. We in fact produced some research findings at a tiny cost, from a little business, that any CRI would have been proud of. Sometimes our outputs look better than a CRI produces with their 5-year million-dollar prototypes. And here's the thing FP, the spending on these projects wasn't just internal, we outworked and networked, employed an extra uni student or two, and gave them some work experience. The tax savings or incentives were well spread out.
Everyone says that NZ's R&D spend is too low compared to our GDP, and the govt portion is only 50% of other countries' percentages. I can tell you that the most efficient use for R&D funds will be in small, fast-acting businesses with low overheads. These businesses won't be using UU's firm for any type of tax minimisation, and they'll be ready for an audit if it is called for. Maybe the small firms don't have big sales channels ready for the outputs, but they have every right to work towards that goal. They can licence their ideas, sell them outright, or spend the five-ten years it might take to get the thing going.