LimestoneGrey — UK R&D tax relief statistics (machine-readable) ================================================================ FILES rd-statistics.csv UTF-8, comma-separated, header row, LF line endings. rd-statistics.json { ...metadata, fields: [...], rows: [ {...} ] }. Both hold the same 10384 rows in the same order. Stable URLs (we intend to keep these in place): https://www.limestonegrey.com/data/rd-statistics.csv https://www.limestonegrey.com/data/rd-statistics.json WHAT THIS IS HMRC's published R&D tax relief statistics, reshaped into tidy long format: one row per financial year x breakdown x measure. Nothing is modelled, interpolated or recalculated. Percentages, shares and average claim values are NOT in the file — compute them from the values, so the arithmetic is yours and the source figures stay untouched. Financial years 2000-01 to 2015-16 are carried forward unchanged from HMRC's September 2025 main tables (RD1, RD2, RD4 and RD8, where they were final), because HMRC's September 2026 tables start at 2016-17; every other row comes from the September 2026 release. HMRC revises recent years in each release, so a figure here can differ from the same year in an earlier edition of this file; the latest release supersedes it. The breakdown tables follow HMRC's current coverage only. FIELDS financial_year HMRC financial year, e.g. "2024-25" (1 April to 31 March). dimension The breakdown axis: "none", "region", "sector", "cost band", "sub-region (ITL2)", "region and sector", "sector (SIC division)". "none" is the UK total, split by scheme only. dimension_value The category. "United Kingdom" where dimension is "none". Two-part values are joined with " | ": "Wales | North Wales", "Wales | C. Manufacturing", "C. Manufacturing | 10 - Manufacture of food products". Section totals in the SIC division breakdown are "
| All divisions". scheme One vocabulary across every table: "SME scheme — deduction only" RD1 claims that were purely a deduction; RD2 "SME Deductions" cost. RD2 has no combination column: its deduction and payable-credit columns (with intensive/ERIS) sum to the SME total. "SME scheme — payable credit only" RD1 claims that were purely a payable credit; RD2 "SME Payable Credits" cost (see above). "SME scheme — deduction and payable credit" RD1 claims combining both. "SME scheme — R&D intensive and ERIS" Claims at the R&D-intensive SME rate (2023-24 on) and, from accounting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2024, Enhanced R&D Intensive Support (ERIS). HMRC reports them in one column. "SME scheme" The whole SME scheme. From 2023-24 this includes R&D-intensive claims and, in 2024-25, ERIS claims. "Large company scheme" The large company scheme, before the RDEC replaced it (2002-03 to 2015-16 in this file). "RDEC — large companies" RDEC claims by large companies under the scheme that closed for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2024. "Large company scheme and RDEC — SMEs" Carried-forward years only (to 2015-16): SMEs claiming under the large company scheme or the RDEC, which HMRC reported in one column ("LC & RDEC claims by SMEs"). "Large company and RDEC schemes" Carried-forward years only (to 2015-16): the large company scheme and the RDEC together. "Vaccines research relief" Vaccines research relief (carried-forward years only). "All schemes" HMRC's total across every scheme. "RDEC — SMEs" RDEC claims by SMEs under that same closed scheme. "Merged RDEC — large companies" Merged RDEC claims by large companies (accounting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2024). "Merged RDEC — SMEs" Merged RDEC claims by SMEs. HMRC: not comparable with RDEC claims by SMEs in earlier years. "RDEC and merged RDEC schemes" RD1/RD2 "RDEC & Merged RDEC Total" and RD8 "RDEC & Merged RDEC". "SME scheme — excluding R&D intensive and ERIS" HMRC's "SME Scheme" column where the same table also carries an intensive/ERIS column: the SME scheme without those claims. Add the two for the whole SME scheme. "RDEC and merged RDEC — large companies" RDS1-RDS3 2024-25 only: the two RDEC schemes combined, large companies. "RDEC and merged RDEC — SMEs" RDS1-RDS3 2024-25 only: the two RDEC schemes combined, SMEs. measure "claims", "returns", "companies", "cost", "expenditure", "first-time applicants". unit "claims", "returns", "companies", "£ million". value Number, or empty where HMRC published no usable figure. note Why value is empty: "suppressed: under 10" (HMRC withholds counts below 10), "suppressed: disclosive" (would identify a company), "not applicable" (scheme not open in that year, or HMRC's "N/A"). "no data" is reserved for an empty published cell and does not occur in this release. Empty whenever value is populated. data_status HMRC's own status for that year on the time-series tables: "Unchanged", "Revised", "Provisional, Revised", "Provisional, Uplifted", "Provisional". Empty on the breakdown tables. source_table The HMRC worksheet, e.g. "RD5_2425". source_cell The A1 cell in that worksheet, e.g. "H16". Together with source_table and source_file this identifies the exact cell every figure came from. source_file Which HMRC ODS file the worksheet belongs to, as a short key: "main-2026", "supplementary-2026", "main-2025". Each is named, with its download URL, under SOURCE below. Breakdown dimensions exclude HMRC's total rows; UK totals live under dimension "none". The exceptions are the region-and-sector rows " | All sectors" and the SIC-division rows "
| All divisions", which HMRC publishes and which exclude claims whose two-digit sector is unknown, so they need not match the region or sector tables. SOURCE Research and Development Tax Credits Statistics: September 2026 HM Revenue and Customs, published 2026-09-29 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/corporate-tax-research-and-development-tax-credit/research-and-development-tax-credits-statistics-september-2026 Files (the source_file keys): main-2026 HM Revenue and Customs: Research and Development Tax Credits Statistics 2026 (main tables) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6ab52b118cb3c0580e501188/rd_tax_credits_main_tables_2026.ods supplementary-2026 HM Revenue and Customs: Research and Development Tax Credits Statistics 2026: Supplementary Tables https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6ab5313ba9c3d267bccceeb9/rd_supplementary_tables_2026.ods main-2025 (carried forward: 2000-01 to 2015-16, RD1, RD2, RD4, RD8 only) Research and Development Tax Credits Statistics: September 2025, main tables (published 2025-09-30) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68dbe4c2c487360cc70c9f5e/rd_tax_credits_main_tables_ods.ods gov.uk now returns 410 Gone for this file; archived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/2025id_/https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68dbe4c2c487360cc70c9f5e/rd_tax_credits_main_tables_ods.ods SHA-256 326a584cd90e8817b284e50f1ed5fb38d01e16c395a486313fe7660974d671fc Worksheets used: RD1 Number of claims by scheme and financial year, 2000-01 to 2024-25 RD2 Cost of support claimed by scheme and financial year (£ million) RD4 R&D expenditure used to claim, by scheme and financial year (£ million) RD5 Regional analysis of number and cost of claims, 2021-22 to 2024-25 RD6 Industry sector analysis of number and cost of claims, 2021-22 to 2024-25 RD7 Number and cost of claims by cost band, 2021-22 to 2024-25 RD8 First-time applicants by scheme and financial year RDS1 Number, cost and expenditure by ITL2 sub-region, 2023-24 to 2024-25 RDS2 Number, cost and expenditure by region and sector, 2023-24 to 2024-25 RDS3 Number, cost and expenditure by two-digit SIC division, 2023-24 to 2024-25 HMRC removed RD3 in this release: "data relating to SME Intensive claims has been incorporated into the main tables" (Notes). RDS3 covers only sectors with more than 1,000 claims. Points to note in HMRC's sheets, handled as stated (nothing is filled in): - RDS1_2425: HMRC's sub-region figures in "Total Expenditure" do not add up to its regional subtotals in three regions: North West (England), sub-regions 3,495 against subtotal 3,470 (L10); East Midlands (England), sub-regions 2,260 against subtotal 2,280 (L21); South East (England), sub-regions 9,745 against subtotal 9,775 (L41). The gaps are wider than rounding to the nearest 5 explains. The figures are transcribed exactly as published; every other column that can be checked adds up within rounding. - RDS2_2324: row 247 repeats row 246 ("Northern Ireland / S. Other services activities") exactly; kept row 246 only - RDS2_2324: no row for Northern Ireland / L. Real Estate (not in HMRC's sheet; left out) CAVEATS HMRC GIVES, WHICH TRAVEL WITH THE NUMBERS Basis: Based on claims for R&D tax credits made by companies in Company Tax returns received on or before 31 May 2026. 2022-23 to 2024-25 are provisional, and 2024-25 has been uplifted to include estimates for claims not yet received; revisions are expected in next year's publication. First-time applicant figures (RD8) for 2024-25 are marked provisional, not uplifted, and are expected to increase as more returns are submitted. Rounding: All figures have been independently rounded to the nearest 5 or £5 million. This can lead to components not summing to the totals shown. Geography: regional and sub-regional figures are allocated by the postcode of the company's registered office, which may not be where the R&D was carried out. Treat them as a map of where claimant companies are registered, not of where UK research happens. Sector: sector is the company's primary SIC 2007 code, which may not describe the R&D itself. Comparability: for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2024 most companies claim under the merged R&D expenditure credit, and only loss-making R&D-intensive SMEs claim under ERIS; the previous schemes closed for those periods. HMRC: "SME-level figures in 2024-25 are not comparable with previous years", and the number of merged RDEC claims by SMEs "is not comparable with RDEC claims by SMEs in previous years' tables". 2023-24 was the first year affected by the April 2023 rate changes and the mandatory Additional Information Form. LICENCE Source data: Crown copyright, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. This compilation is published under the same terms. The licence requires you to acknowledge the source, and the line above does that. Please also credit and link to the compiler: "LimestoneGrey, from HMRC R&D tax credit statistics, https://www.limestonegrey.com/rd-tax-relief/statistics/". UPDATE CADENCE HMRC publishes annually, in the autumn. This file is rebuilt from the new source tables on publication day, and we intend to keep the URLs above in place, so a link or a scheduled fetch should keep working across releases. The next HMRC release is scheduled for Autumn 2027. REBUILDING npm run build:dataset (fetches the ODS files from gov.uk) See scripts/build-dataset.mjs. Compiled 2026-09-29.