R&D Tax Credits R&D Tax Credits in Ireland: could Revenue owe your company money?

Do you qualify?

You don’t need a lab or people in white coats. The credit is for work where your team set out to make a genuine technical advance and hit problems that weren’t easy to solve. In plain terms, you probably have a claim if:

• You were building or significantly improving a product, process, device, material, or software, not just configuring or restyling something off the shelf.
• You ran into technical problems that a competent professional in your field couldn’t simply look up or solve in an afternoon. You had to experiment, prototype, and sometimes fail before it worked. This was an intricate process, not a simple, easy solution.
• The work was in science or technology (software and engineering count).

What usually doesn’t count: routine updates, cosmetic or purely aesthetic changes, market research, or work where the answer was already well known and just needed applying.

Not sure which side of the line you’re on? That’s ok; the rules are nuanced. We’ll check properly, free of charge.

What you can claim

The credit is based on what you actually spent on the R&D work, typically:

• Your team’s time, the share of salaries for the people who did the development.
• Materials and consumables used up in the work.
• Subcontractors and universities that did some of the R&D for you (within certain limits).
• A fair share of related overheads.

We work out the qualifying amount with you and apply the credit rate to it.

What it’s worth to you

The credit is up to 30% of your qualifying R&D spend, rising to 35% for accounting periods starting on or after 1 January 2026. As an example, €100,000 of qualifying work earns a €30,000 credit (€35,000 from 2026).

It helps you in one of two ways:

• If your company is paying corporation tax, the credit comes straight off that bill.
• If it isn’t, and it is in a loss-making year, or where the credit is bigger than your bill, Revenue pays you the balance in cash.

And it’s on top of the normal tax relief you already get for the cost of the work, so the real benefit is larger than the headline rate.

If the total credit is €25,000 or less, it can be repaid in one instalment. If it is over that figure, the credit is paid in three instalments over about three years. For that first instalment, you can choose to take the cash or to set it against other taxes you owe first (corporation tax, PAYE, or VAT), whichever suits your cash flow. We handle the mechanics and track every instalment through to your account.

How it works with us

1. A quick eligibility check, a few questions to see if there’s a claim worth making.
2. You tell us about the work, your projects, the people who worked on them, and the costs. Plain English is perfect; we turn it into the formal claim wording.
3. We generate and file the claim, we prepare everything to Revenue’s standard and submit it.
4. You get paid.

Timing matters, especially for a first claim

Two deadlines are worth knowing about:

• You have 12 months from your accounting year-end to make a claim. If you miss it, the claim for that year is gone.
• If it’s your first R&D claim, or you haven’t claimed in the last three years, Revenue must be notified at least 90 days before the claim is filed. Leave it too close to your deadline, and there simply isn’t time to give that notice, so the claim can be lost before you’ve even started.

The upshot: if there’s any chance you qualify, talk to us early. A short conversation now can be the difference between claiming and missing out.