For companies based in Ireland that are starting their new tax year in January, the New Year is a natural moment to review internal processes to make sure that there is a strategy in place to optimise R&D claims.
R&D Tax Credits provide a valuable incentive for innovation, offering a financial boost that can fund new hires, equipment upgrades, business growth, or even further research and development.
And yet, the majority of businesses in Ireland prepare their R&D claims retrospectively, trying to piece together the work that’s been done over the last twelve months.
Scrambling around for records is an obviously stressful and inefficient way of making an R&D claim, but it’s also risky. When technical details are missed, it often reduces the ultimate value of what can be claimed. Claims with evidence gaps are also much more likely to trigger a Revenue review. But with the right R&D processes in place, these risks are completely avoidable.
In this article, we explain why retrospective R&D claims are a bad idea while offering best practice tips on how to prepare your business for making a successful R&D claim in 2026.
The problem with making retrospective R&D Tax Credits claims
It’s common for those who invest in research and development to prepare their R&D Tax Credits claims retrospectively, but this can cause all sorts of problems when it comes to gathering the necessary information for Revenue.
When R&D is no longer fresh in the mind, it is harder to remember exactly who has done what and when (especially if the R&D has happened months before). One common problem we see is that key technical staff may have moved on, taking their knowledge of how the innovation happened with them.
Evidence like technical data or R&D memos or reports can be much harder to find after the fact, so your records might be missing some very important details. You might also struggle to apportion costs if there aren’t clear logs to show how much time staff, equipment and other resources were used for R&D activities. More often, this can mean that costs or activities can be missed or overlooked, reducing the value of the claim.
Strategically plan to claim R&D Tax Credits before the innovation starts
Small changes to your approach to innovation can prevent these sorts of issues from cropping up later. Better still, companies who keep contemporaneous records typically see an uplift in their claim value. This is because with ongoing record keeping it’s easier to identify qualifying R&D activities. It also makes for stronger, more defensible claims, which puts you in a much safer position in the event of a Revenue enquiry.
Successful companies plan ahead by putting processes in place to help build a clear evidence trail for their R&D claims. These record keeping processes needs to achieve two things.
Firstly, you’ll need to produce an itemised breakdown on your expenditure. So, not only do you need to record what you’ve spent you’ll also need to show clear evidence to justify how those expenses are apportioned to R&D. Secondly, you’ll need to tell the ‘story’ of your R&D project. This means keeping records that help show the scientific or technological baseline you have started from, the specific uncertainties your team faced, and the systematic activities you have undertaken to develop your solution.
In practice, this means documenting everything as it happens. Some examples of evidence include:
- Project plans
- Emails
- Timesheets
- Competitor analysis
- Test logs
- Test reports
- Datasets
- Design briefs
- Completed designs
- Meeting notes
- Invoices & receipts
This can seem like an extensive and onerous list of costs, but thankfully Leyton clients benefit from the use of our document templates to ensure efficient capture of this data in a contemporaneous manner.
The benefits of proactive R&D Tax Credits claim planning
Planning for R&D Tax Credits in advance won’t just improve your recordkeeping, it can also help to create a culture of innovation that can lead to exciting new R&D opportunities.
Our client, John Paul Construction, found that a proactive approach did more than just improve their understanding of what they could claim, it drove a genuine enthusiasm for developing new solutions across the business:
“We’re now engaged in a much more proactive process of R&D, trying to leverage the value of Revenue claims by proactively looking and developing more R&D solutions and looking at different and better ways of working in the construction industry.”
Read our case study to find out more: John Paul Construction
In addition, a proactive approach to collating your R&D tax claim also means a more robust financial process. A contemporaneous approach means that the finance side of your business can plan for a forecasted offset of corporation tax offset or cash injection into the business.
How Leyton Ireland can help
If you’re halfway through, or have recently finished, an innovative project and you’ve not made the types of detailed records that we’ve recommended in this article. Don’t panic. It’s still possible to make an R&D Tax Credits claim retrospectively.
While preparing in advance is always the ideal strategy, our team is here to make sure you don’t miss out on the financial relief to which you are entitled. By consulting with your technical staff, we can identify eligible activities and put together the necessary documentation to ensure your retrospective claim is both robust and compliant.
We’ll do more than just help you maximise your claim; we’ll guide you through Revenue’s specific requirements so that your entire team becomes better informed. This not only allows you to claim with confidence today, but it also tells you what you need to know for optimising your recordkeeping for the future.
Get in touch to find out more.
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