nelsonic commented 8 years ago

We risk making a "Profit" this year because I have left 90% my (contracting) earnings in the business to ensure we have capital to work on Products. Thankfully instead of paying 20% Tax on the money, we can use R&D Tax Relief: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/corporation-tax-research-and-development-rd-relief

NextAction: Call: George on Monday!

nelsonic commented 8 years ago

I tried to call George but did not get through to him. Sent him a detailed text message instead. Hope to have a bit more luck tomorrow. dwyl-r d-tax-credits

iteles commented 8 years ago

Meeting this Thursday 👍

nelsonic commented 7 years ago

@iteles please bring @markwilliamfirth up-to-speed on this early next week (once all accounts are prepared) so we can pick this up soon! thanks!

iteles commented 7 years ago

George called me last Friday, will call again in late February and we can start the process for 2016/17 then 👍

ghost commented 7 years ago

GrantTree is another company that can do R&D tax credit reports.

You can claim up to two years.

ghost commented 7 years ago

Currently in correspondence with GrantTree and Leyton

ghost commented 7 years ago

@iteles would you be able to give me an estimate of how much development time is spent on the projects we pay contractors to do that we retain the IP for?

i.e. percentage of time contractors are paid to work on DWYL modules and in-house projects

ghost commented 7 years ago

^question from GrantTree in order to calculate our claim estimate

iteles commented 7 years ago

We can calculate how many client projects.

On dev time, does the seniority of the dev matter (i.e. higher day rates or lower)?

ghost commented 7 years ago

Yes - I think he basically wants an estimate of how much money goes towards our own IP so senior developer rates will make a difference

ghost commented 7 years ago

@iteles do you have an estimate for this?

ghost commented 7 years ago

@nelsonic I believe @iteles said you might know the estimate for this? Can someone give me a figure please? 😄

nelsonic commented 7 years ago

This is an easy calculation that anyone can derive with some simple arithmetic. £400k.

2k hours per year x 2 years x £100/hr (my "market/going rate") this is a conservative estimate of the time I have invested so far in dwyl modules and I would be happy to explain exactly how I spent that time to someone at HMRC if they ask. 👍

tl;dr

Research and Development Tax Credits exist for one reason: to support the investment in Technolgoy in British Business which will lead to value/jobs in the UK economy. We are generating value (as evidenced by how much VAT we've paid) and creating Jobs ask anyone who has received a payment from @dwyl recently. 😉

ALL the work I have done @dwyl qualifies for R&D tax relief. I have systematically made as much of my work "re-useable" as Open Source. .some() of it is still "Work-in-Progress" e.g: https://github.com/dwyl/time & https://github.com/dwyl/tudo but "WiP" is "OK" for R&D. ✅

Our code is being used by thousands of people and has been downloaded millions of times so there is clearly "advancement". I have spent many thousands of hours working on the code and if I were to be paid (at my market rate) for all that time it would exhaust any revenue we have made over the past 2 years.

For a more "precise" figure, please consult our revenue/expenditure numbers in @iteles' spreadsheet.

Thanks! (unassigning myself to focus on writing more code... 😉 )

ghost commented 7 years ago

@iteles I'm not sure the above is correct...because the amount we've spent is not equivalent to that because the remuneration will not reflect that - it has to actually come from real money that we spend. Do you know how much we've actually spent on tech ip we own? I'm unable to calculate it from the spreadsheet because I don't know what percentage of the work done that we own the ip for.

nelsonic commented 7 years ago

@markwilliamfirth this is exceedingly simple: pay me all the money I've made for the company doing Dev/QA/Team-Lead over the last 2 years and you'll have a nice big chunk out of the P&L which we can claim on R&D. ✅ I will re-invest the money back into the business a minute later. 👍 @iteles please handle the "details". thanks. ❤️

ghost commented 7 years ago

@nelsonic I don't know if it's that simple as paying you all the money might drastically increase your tax

@iteles do you have an estimate for money not related to nelson's remuneration? It'll be easier if we start with that

iteles commented 7 years ago

@nelsonic Mark and I will take care of this, please mute notifications for this.

@markwilliamfirth If you're able to come into dwyl tomorrow morning, let's sit and go through the open issues like this one together :+1:

iteles commented 7 years ago

@markwilliamfirth Let's go through this together when we have an expenditure per project from our end of year accounts https://github.com/dwyl/hq/issues/229

We'll need to think about how we deal with Nelson's contributions separately 👍

iteles commented 7 years ago

This has been blocked for the last 6 months as per https://github.com/dwyl/hq/issues/112#issuecomment-286265917, but the relevant blocker has now been moved into #373

ghost commented 7 years ago

@iteles this isn't blocked - the next step is to provide estimates of what percentage of each project is R&D work, the £ figures don't block the percentage estimate

iteles commented 7 years ago

@markwilliamfirth As per my comment here: https://github.com/dwyl/hq/issues/112#issuecomment-286265917 this cannot be completed until #373 is complete. I was just updating the issue reference seeing as you split that portion of the issue out into a new issue recently.

ghost commented 7 years ago

@iteles I understand your point but I think there is a misunderstanding - the next step is to provide an estimate of a claim, to do this we need two pieces of information. One is the percentage of a project that is R&D / open source. The second is the amount of money spent on that project. Both figures can be estimated independently of each other, so there is no blocker to calculating the former estimate. Do you want me to open a separate issue to make it more clear?

ghost commented 7 years ago

This is now an epic

Next steps:

iteles commented 6 years ago

Prepped and met with our R&D consultants today to move this forward, great meeting.

We'll be looking to sign our contract for them to help us with this work by 14th December (@iteles will be reviewing the contracts until then), have our technical onsite interview #391 in early January and our claim in in late February, once #229 is finally done.

We can claim for:

All projects that are technically challenging (this includes anything we've done in elixir or elm as these are so new)
Both client projects and our own projects, both open source and closed
- Our clients can also claim for these same projects
Any code that we have created for our learn-... tutorials, but not the README itself
Both full time dwylers and freelancers (but a smaller percentage - 25% of full timers)

This cannot be completed without completing the following issues, as we will need all of this information:

Exact costs per project #373
Year end accounts completed #229 (draft form is ok for a first pass)

iteles commented 6 years ago

Met with the consultants today to ascertain which projects qualified, next step is https://github.com/dwyl/hq/issues/391

iteles commented 6 years ago

This issue is full of noise.

Closing it in favour of the clearer #438, with reference to this issue for historic purposes.

assembledadam commented 5 years ago

Randomly found this on a Google search.

May be useful to people in this thread: check out Claimer (https://www.claimer.io). It's now in public beta, and cuts the fees of specialist agencies significantly, charging 5% of what you get back instead of the 20-30% that GrantTree/Leyton charge.

Because the information gathering part is via an app, it's also a lot quicker - minutes instead of weeks. Trustpilot here: https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/claimer.io

Full disclosure: I built the app because I thought someone should end the gravy train for those specialists..! 👍

nelsonic commented 5 years ago

@assembledadam well done for building an app to replace over-charging human "experts" (sales people) who take a chunk out of claims for not much in the way of "service" ... 🥇

clamer io

Worth noting that 5% while much cheaper than the competitors is not a "flat fee". The graph of 5% of anything is never a "flat" line; it rises in proportion to the claim.

"A flat fee, also referred to as a flat rate refers to a pricing structure that charges a single fixed fee for a service, regardless of usage." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_rate

The reason we used a Leyton to help us fill our R&D tax credit claim was their experience and expertise. (basically we didn't want the hassle of HMRC wasting our time with questions on the claim...)

Terms:

Claimer Terms of Use
Claimer is a web application which is located at https://www.claimer.io that files Research & Development tax credit claims on behalf of UK companies.

Claimer Tech Ltd is registered in England and Wales under registration number 11148907 and our principal place of business is at Claimer Tech Ltd, 17 Hurstbourne Priors, 19 Harewood Road, South Croydon, CR2 7AT ('we' or 'us').

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These Terms of Use ('Terms') apply to your ('Customer' and 'you' below) use of the website at https://www.claimer.io ('Site') and any features or services ('Services') offered through it.

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As we handle sensitive information about companies, we take our legal obligations to protect that information under the Data Protection Act 1998 and EU General Data Protection Regulation ('GDPR') very seriously. To understand exactly how we handle data, check our Privacy Policy.

We want to let you know that all data you upload to the Site is 100% yours. We’ll never share or make your data or information available to anyone without your explicit permission (other than a legal requirement such as a court order).

Your data is transmitted over a secure (TLS) connection and your credentials are encrypted and hashed - we don’t store any passwords. Your company data is stored securely, and only people you’ve assigned as collaborators can access your data, per the access permissions you assigned. We expect you to ensure that your collaborators, particularly those you give Admin access to, have strong passwords, ideally different to their social network site logins.

To enhance the service, we plan to provide you with aggregated data to help you to make data-driven decisions within your claim. For example, we could provide an estimated R&D percentage of an employee. To provide such a service, the Site needs to be able to access anonymized and aggregated R&D project data across thousands of companies. You agree for specific data points from your company profile and settings to be included in such aggregated data services in non-identifiable and anonymised form, for the mutual benefit of all Claimer customers.

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We will perform the services with reasonable skill and care. The services are provided solely for the purpose set out in this Agreement. Our obligations under this Agreement are concerned with performing the services as a means to achieve a successful outcome for a R&D Tax Relief claim submitted by you, however we do not make any representations about whether or not you will receive a full or partial refund.

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4. Your Responsibilities
You are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the information that you provide to us. The accuracy of the R&D Tax Relief claim prepared by Claimer will depend on the accuracy and completeness of the responses that you provide.

By instructing us, you confirm that you are authorised to act on behalf of the company for whom the Services are being sought. You must notify us as soon as you are no longer authorised to act on the company’s behalf and we will terminate this contract.

You will be responsible for reviewing the R&D Tax Relief claim report for accuracy and completeness and arrange for the claim to be filed within your tax return within 2 years of the accounting year end.

You agree to appoint us as your HMRC R&D tax agent to allow us to correspond directly with HMRC on your behalf. You also authorise us to be your nominee allowing us to enter our client bank account details on the company tax return in order to receive funds from HMRC on your behalf. Any funds received from HMRC as a result of a R&D Tax Relief Claim will be deposited into Claimer Tech client bank account, ready to be paid to you minus our fee within one working day of cleared receipt.

You will not, directly or indirectly: reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise attempt to discover the source code, object code or underlying structure, ideas, know-how or algorithms relevant to the Services or any software, documentation or data related to the Services ('Software'); modify, translate, or create derivative works based on the Services or any Software (except to the extent expressly permitted by us or authorized within the Services); use the Services or any Software for timesharing or service bureau purposes or otherwise for the benefit of a third; or remove any proprietary notices or labels.

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Claimer’s fee is be 5% of any R&D tax credit recovered, excluding any promotion code or discount. There is no minimum fee. There will also be no fee in the unlikely event that the claim is unsuccessful.

If the claim results in a payable tax credit, we will collect this payment on behalf of you. On cleared receipt of the tax credit payment from HMRC, we will transfer this sum minus our fee to your nominated bank account within 1 working day. We will follow up this payment with an invoice and receipt of payment.

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If you have a question about these Terms of Use or a complaint, please email us at support@claimer.io and we will respond as promptly as we can, or in the time period prescribed by law, whichever is sooner.

Guessing the part of verifying company details hasn't been automated yet. Still, looks promising. 👍

assembledadam commented 5 years ago

@nelsonic Hey Nelson.

Thanks for the detailed reply. Below is my response to your points one by one.

Worth noting that 5% while much cheaper than the competitors is not a "flat fee". The graph of 5% of anything is never a "flat" line; it rises in proportion to the claim.

Good spot, just a grammar fail there, now fixed. As I mentioned the app is in public beta - the homepage generally sucks in a few ways. There's a vastly improved one coming very soon (< 2 weeks), which better explains the service.

Also worth noting, which will be illustrated in the new homepage, Claimer's 5% fee is capped at £5,000 (i.e. no fee beyond a claim size of £100k).

In addition, we offer a fixed fee of £250, including submission, if you only wish to use the software to produce your own claim - i.e. without our R&D experts assessing and producing the claim for you.

The reason we used a Leyton to help us fill our R&D tax credit claim was their experience and expertise. (basically we didn't want the hassle of HMRC wasting our time with questions on the claim...)

Understood, but Claimer also utilises experienced R&D experts to produce your claim, in fact to a larger extent than Leyton and others:

The app allows you to enter your information more efficiently than with traditional specialists like Leyton, in a 5 step process. It connects to your accounting software (currently supported: Xero, coming soon: FreeAgent, Sage, Quickbooks, and Wave) which also significantly speeds up the claim.

On submission, the claim goes an R&D expert that checks the company and costs for validity, ensures the claim is maximised, and then they write the report using the information you have provided. We have processed over 35 claims now since January with a 100% success rate, and no queries from HMRC.

In addition all other agencies I have come across (such as Leyton, GrantTree, ForrestBrown, etc) have accountants write your R&D technical narrative. These accountants do not have more than a superficial understanding of the technology and development undertaken, which often results in flawed (invalid) technical reports according to the legislation. I have seen them - and they can be awful. HMRC does not currently check every claim, which can result in a false sense of confidence.

With Claimer, the R&D expert that writes your report is also an expert in the field of your R&D claim (e.g. software, hardware, manufacturing), so the claim is always technically accurate and within the R&D guidelines. This explains why we have not had a single query from HMRC.

In any event: Claimer would handle any queries HMRC may have about the claim on your behalf included as part of the service.

Guessing the part of verifying company details hasn't been automated yet.

The company is a registered HMRC agent, and is also supervised by HMRC. As such, by law we must carry out anti-money laundering checks, as well as several manual checks to ensure the public records of the company indicate that it qualifies for R&D tax relief. Would be a lot of work to automate that at the moment!

If you'd consider using the service I'd be happy to demo it to you on a call - just pop me a message (adam@claimer.io).

PS. probably unnecessary to paste the entire terms and conditions 😶

update: Just realised an inaccuracy within the T&Cs - it states both you are responsible for both reviewing and submitting the claim report - we in fact do all this for you. Am updating the terms now. Probably our solicitor being a little too protective!

dwyl / hq

Corporation Tax: Research and Development tax relief #112

NextAction: Call: George on Monday!

tl;dr