PROFESSIONAL R&D TAX INCENTIVE SERVICES
If your business has spent the last year building, testing or improving something – a new product, a piece of software, a different way of doing things – some of that work may qualify for the R&D Tax Incentive. It’s a joint Australian Government programme, administered by AusIndustry and the ATO, designed to support businesses taking on genuine technical risk to develop something new.
The trouble is, most small and medium businesses aren’t set up to assess this themselves. They’re not sure what counts as an eligible activity, how registration actually works, or what the ATO expects to see if a claim is ever queried. Navon Global works through all of it with you – from working out what’s genuinely eligible, to registering activities with AusIndustry, to preparing the schedule that goes with your company tax return.
An R&D Tax Incentive claim isn’t one form filled in at tax time. It starts with working out what actually qualifies, runs through registration and cost tracking, and ends with a properly documented schedule lodged alongside your tax return. Navon Global can support as much of that process as your business needs, from a one-off eligibility check through to managing the whole thing for you.
Before anything gets registered, we sit down and go through the actual work your business did over the year – the projects, the technical problems you ran into, the testing you carried out. We compare this against the legislated definitions of core and supporting R&D activities, so you get a straight answer on what’s likely to qualify and what isn’t. This step matters because eligibility is assessed activity by activity, not industry by industry – a business that assumes it doesn’t qualify, or assumes it definitely does, is usually working from the wrong end of that assessment.
Every eligible R&D activity has to be registered with AusIndustry before it can be claimed, and it needs to happen within the required window after the end of your income year - miss it, and the claim can't proceed, regardless of how eligible the work was. We prepare the registration, describing your activities in the technical language AusIndustry's application expects, and manage the submission so nothing is left to the last week before the deadline.
Not every cost linked to a project counts towards your R&D claim, and not every eligible cost is obvious at first glance. We go through payroll, contractor invoices, overheads and other project spend to work out what can genuinely be attributed to the registered activities, separating that from the day-to-day costs of running the business. The result is a cost base that reflects what was actually spent on eligible work, not a rough estimate pulled together at year end.
If AusIndustry or the ATO ever ask questions about a claim, the documentation is what carries it. We help build the evidence trail - technical notes, project records, testing outcomes, time spent on eligible activities - while the work is still fresh, rather than trying to reconstruct it months later. We'll also help set up simple habits for capturing this information as you go, so next year's claim starts from a stronger position than this one did.
Once eligibility, costs and documentation are settled, we prepare the R&D Tax Incentive schedule that sits alongside your company income tax return. We work directly with your existing tax return preparer - or handle the return ourselves, where that's part of our engagement - so the offset is calculated correctly and reported the way the ATO expects, with nothing lost in translation between the technical assessment and the final lodgement.
An R&D Tax Incentive claim doesn't end once it's lodged. We stay available if AusIndustry or the ATO come back with questions about a claim, and we check in with you across the financial year - not just at tax time - so eligible activities and costs are being captured as they happen. That ongoing contact is usually what makes the following year's claim faster and less stressful to put together.
Service Benefits
The value of the R&D Tax Incentive depends entirely on your own eligible activities and spend, so we won’t put a number on it before we’ve looked at your business. What we can promise is a claim that’s accurate, defensible and properly managed – and the practical benefits that come with that.
A lot of businesses either assume they don't do 'real' R&D and leave a legitimate claim on the table, or assume everything technical counts and claim too broadly. We give you a straight, activity-by-activity answer instead of a guess, so you're neither missing out on genuine entitlements nor claiming activities that wouldn't hold up if they were reviewed.
A claim built on properly assessed activities and solid documentation is far less likely to run into trouble later. If AusIndustry or the ATO do have questions, you've got something concrete to point to, rather than a scramble to explain, months after the fact, why a particular activity was included. That's the difference between a claim that holds up under scrutiny and one that doesn't.
Technical write-ups, registration forms and cost workpapers take real time to prepare properly - time most business owners and finance managers don't have spare while they're also running the business day to day. Handing that side of it over means the claim still gets done properly, without it eating into the time you'd rather spend on the work itself.
Rather than a rough estimate stitched together at year end, your R&D expenditure gets identified and categorised properly against the activities it actually relates to. That means the claim reflects what was genuinely spent on eligible work, not a number rounded up or down because nobody had time to check it properly.
Knowing earlier in the year what's likely to be eligible means the R&D offset can be factored into your broader cash flow and tax planning, rather than turning up as a surprise once the return is done. That's particularly useful for businesses running multiple projects, where the eligible portion of spend isn't always obvious until someone's actually gone through it.
As your R&D activity changes from one year to the next - new projects, different technical challenges, more or less spend - the same assessment and documentation approach carries forward. You're not starting from zero each year, and the process gets more efficient as we build up a working history of your business's activities.
Managing an R&D Tax Incentive claim properly means staying involved across the whole financial year, not just showing up when it’s time to lodge. Here’s how the process typically runs, from the first conversation through to lodgement.
We start by getting across what your business actually did during the year - the projects, the technical problems, the testing and development work involved. You talk us through it and share whatever project records or technical background you've already got; we map what you tell us against the R&D Tax Incentive's definitions of core and supporting activities. You come out of this step with an honest view of what's likely eligible, before anything gets registered.
With eligible activities identified, we turn to the numbers - payroll, contractor costs and other project expenditure that can genuinely be attributed to that work. You provide the financial records and cost detail; we use it to prepare the AusIndustry registration and the workpapers behind it. By the end of this step, your activities are registered within the required timeframe, and the cost base for the claim is settled.
Next, we finalise the supporting documentation - the technical and financial evidence that backs up the claim - and prepare the R&D Tax Incentive schedule for your company tax return. We'll come back to you for sign-off and any project detail that's still outstanding, and coordinate with your existing tax return preparer where needed. What you get at the end is a claim that's properly documented before it's ever lodged.
The claim is lodged as part of your annual tax return, and that's not where our involvement stops. If AusIndustry or the ATO come back with questions, we're already across the detail and can respond on your behalf. You can expect ongoing support through to the outcome of the claim, not a one-off service that disappears the moment it's submitted.
Why Navon Global
R&D Tax Incentive claims sit at the intersection of technical assessment and tax compliance, and getting either side wrong creates real risk for a business. Here’s the approach we take to managing that balance for our clients.
We assess activities against the actual legislative criteria, not against what would make the biggest claim. That means telling you plainly when something doesn't qualify, as well as when it does - an approach that costs a little in the short term but protects the claim, and the relationship, over the long run. Businesses that work with us know where they stand, rather than hoping a claim holds up if it's ever looked at closely.
We treat documentation as part of the claim, not paperwork to tidy up afterwards. Evidence is built while the work is still fresh, and structured in a way that makes sense if AusIndustry or the ATO ever ask to see it - because a claim is only as strong as what's behind it. That habit is what separates a claim that survives a review from one that doesn't.
We know what it's like running a business with limited finance resourcing and an owner or manager already wearing several hats. Our process is built around that reality - clear steps, defined input from you at the right moments, and nothing that assumes you've got a dedicated R&D team sitting behind the claim.
Rather than reappearing once a year at tax time, we stay in touch across the financial year so eligible activities and costs are captured as they happen. That ongoing relationship is what makes each year's claim a little easier to put together than the one before it, and means nothing important gets missed simply because it happened eight months before anyone thought to write it down.
Eligible R&D activity isn’t limited to laboratories or tech start-ups. It shows up wherever a business is genuinely developing something new – a process, a product, a piece of technology – including in industries that wouldn’t normally describe what they do as “research and development.”
If your business has developed a new building method, material or on-site process to solve a genuine technical problem, that work may go beyond standard project delivery and into R&D territory. The key is separating everyday problem-solving on a job from documented technical experimentation - which is exactly where we can help.
Practices and providers developing new devices, diagnostic tools or treatment approaches may have eligible activity, particularly where the outcome genuinely wasn't known in advance. Clinical and patient-facing work is often wrongly assumed to be automatically in or automatically out - the reality depends on the specific activity.
Product formulation, shelf-life testing, new processing methods and packaging development can all qualify where there's a real technical or scientific unknown being worked through. The line to watch is between routine recipe tweaks, which don't qualify, and documented product or process experimentation, which can.
Custom platform features, inventory or fulfilment technology, and personalisation systems built in-house can involve eligible technical development, separate from simply using an off-the-shelf ecommerce platform or plugin. The eligible work is usually the custom layer built on top, and that needs to be clearly identified and documented.
Businesses building or substantially modifying route optimisation systems, fleet technology or tracking platforms may be doing eligible development work, even if that technology was built to support operations rather than sold as a product. In-house technology like this is often under-recognised as R&D simply because nobody thought to register it.
Firms developing their own matching algorithms, payroll automation or workforce technology platforms may have eligible software development activity. Software R&D has a stricter eligibility test than most other categories, and it's an area where businesses commonly misjudge where the line actually sits.
Questions we get asked a lot by Australian business owners looking at outsourced or online bookkeeping.
It's a joint Australian Government programme, administered by AusIndustry and the ATO, that offers eligible businesses a tax offset for costs incurred on eligible research and development activity. It's an offset against tax owed, tied to your actual eligible spend for the year - not a grant paid upfront, and not a fixed amount every business receives.
Broadly, eligible activities fall into two categories: core activities, which involve genuine experimentation to resolve an outcome that couldn't be known or determined in advance, and supporting activities directly related to that experimentation. Eligibility is assessed activity by activity rather than by industry, which is why ordinary business improvements or routine testing usually don't qualify, even in a technical-sounding business.
The R&D Tax Incentive isn't limited to tech start-ups or large companies with dedicated research teams. Any business genuinely developing new products, processes or technology can potentially qualify, regardless of industry - the deciding factor is whether the specific activity meets the legislated criteria, not the size or sector of the business doing it.
It's a two-step process. Eligible activities are registered with AusIndustry within the required period after the end of your income year, and the tax offset itself is then claimed through the R&D Tax Incentive schedule, lodged with your company income tax return via the ATO. Missing the AusIndustry registration window means the claim can't proceed, regardless of eligibility.
It depends on the complexity and scale of your claim - how many activities are involved, the size of the business, and how much documentation needs to be built or reviewed. Rather than quoting a flat fee upfront, we scope this properly after an initial eligibility conversation, so you know what you're paying for before you commit to anything.
Reviews are a normal part of a self-assessed programme like this one - they're not automatically a sign something's wrong. What a review actually tests is the quality of your documentation and the strength of your eligibility assessment. If your claim is ever contacted about, we stay involved to help respond, rather than leaving you to work through it on your own.
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If your business is investing in research and development, you may be eligible for valuable tax incentives. We can help you understand your eligibility, identify qualifying activities, and navigate the claim process with confidence.
