News
Claiming R&D Tax Relief? Don’t Miss This Deadline
23 Jul 2026
If your company has a 31 March 2026 year end and you’re planning to claim R&D tax relief, there’s a deadline you need to know about, and it’s closer than you might think.
The deadline: 30 September 2026
Since April 2023, many companies have had to submit an advance notification to HMRC before they can make an R&D claim. This isn’t the claim itself, it’s a separate step that tells HMRC you intend to claim, and it has to be done within six months of your year end.
For a 31 March 2026 year end, that six-month window closes on 30 September 2026.
If the notification isn’t submitted in time, HMRC won’t be able to accept the claim for that period, so it’s worth getting ahead of it.
Does this affect you?
Not every company needs to submit a notification, it depends on your claims history and when you last claimed. The only way to know for certain is to check, and the only safe time to check is now, not in late September.
If you’ve been developing new products, processes, materials, or software, or working through technical problems without an obvious answer, it’s worth a conversation, even if you’re not sure whether it counts as R&D.
What this can look like in practice
R&D can apply whenever a company is trying to overcome a genuine technical or scientific uncertainty, something a competent professional in that field couldn’t simply look up or solve from existing knowledge. Across the sectors we work with, that’s shown up as:
Manufacturing: redesigning a production process to handle a new material or developing a bespoke piece of machinery when nothing off-the-shelf would do the job.
Agriculture: trialling new growing techniques, feed formulations, or equipment adaptations to solve a problem specific to your land or livestock.
Software and engineering: building a system or integration where the solution wasn’t obvious in advance, and real technical risk was involved in getting there.
The common thread isn’t the industry, it’s whether you were genuinely uncertain you could achieve the result, and had to work it out through testing, iteration, or technical problem-solving rather than just applying a known method.
Common questions
- We’ve never claimed R&D relief before. Does this still apply to us? Yes. The advance notification requirement applies to first-time claimants and to companies that haven’t claimed in the last three years. If this is your first claim, you’ll almost certainly need to notify.
- We claimed last year. Do we still need to do this? Possibly not, but it depends on your claims history and how recently you last claimed. Worth a quick check with us rather than assuming either way.
- We’re not sure if what we’re doing counts as R&D. Should we still get in touch? Yes, that’s exactly the conversation to have with us before the deadline, not after. It costs nothing to check, and it’s far better than finding out in October that you had a valid claim but missed the window to notify.
- What happens if we miss the 30 September deadline? If a notification was required and isn’t submitted in time, HMRC will not accept the R&D claim for that accounting period, regardless of how strong the underlying R&D work is. There’s no appeal route for a missed notification, which is why it’s worth having the conversation with us sooner rather than later.
What to do next
Get in touch with us in good time before the deadline. The notification itself is straightforward once we know your situation, but we need enough notice to review it properly and get it submitted. Leaving it to the last few days adds risk that simply isn’t necessary.
Speak to your usual WR Partners contact, or get in touch with our Tax Consultancy team directly.
