Businesses of all sizes will be required to pre-register in order to apply for R&D tax credits as of next year.

In order to tackle abuse of R&D relief, HMRC is telling businesses that all future R&D claims must be made digitally, estimating that 90,000 companies will be affected by the changes. The Government will announce the cost of the new measures during the autumn Budget this year.

Next year, companies will need to inform HMRC in advance if they plan to make an R&D claim via a digital service.

Each claim must be endorsed by a named senior officer of the company, and each pre-register will need to be within six months of the end of the period to which the claim relates.

The new rules will also amend the time limit for making a claim to two years from the end of the period, rather than 12 months from the statutory filing date. This measure will prevent companies that don't receive a notice to file from benefiting by having more time to make a claim.

HMRC says businesses growing from the SME scheme to the research and development expenditure credit (RDEC) will be protected, so that when an SME within a group exceeds the threshold, all companies in the group will retain SME status for one year afterwards.

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