R&D tax case law: a register of the tribunal decisions

Most of the arguments an R&D claim runs into have already been decided, on real facts, by a small body of tribunal decisions. Whether a customer’s payment subsidises the work. Who is qualified to speak for the science. Whether there was a project at all, whether anyone can prove what was spent on it, and whether HMRC opened the enquiry in time. This register holds one page per decision: the citation, the procedural history, what each side argued, the statutory words, the paragraphs that carry the reasoning, and what it changes for a claim today.

What do the tribunal decisions say about R&D claims?

Eight propositions these entries support. Every First-tier decision named binds only the parties and sets no precedent:

A competent professional is made by command of the field, whether or not by qualifications. The formulation is HMRC’s own at Flame Tree Publishing [66], endorsed at [68]: qualifications, experience and up-to-date knowledge of the field’s principles. Environmental Services [79] holds the Guidelines mandate no particular qualification and accepted a yard foreman [81]; Get Onbord [82] accepted a witness with no formal qualification in the field.

The evidence has to come from someone who did the work, or someone with relevant expertise who reviewed the records. AHK Recruitment [73] found it remarkable that nobody contemporaneously involved gave evidence, nor anyone with relevant expertise who had reviewed the records. Beer Express [99] gave no weight to adviser-written reports resting on bald assertion.

The advance has to be in a field of science or technology, measured against that field’s baseline. Tanglewood Care Services [99] found the object was managing the company’s own homes, not an advance beyond its operations. Environmental Services [95] was given no clearly articulated technological baseline; in M&C Educational Training [42(3)] the advance was in education, a social science.

Improving your own operations is not an advance in the field. Environmental Services [90] found improvements to operations rather than to the underlying field, while rejecting HMRC’s case that the work was merely routine “in the sense of ordinary day-to-day operations” [99]. Its conclusion was not that the company did no “innovative work” [101]; Tanglewood Care Services [117] adds that the test is not effectiveness or success.

A plan is required, a record is expected, and its absence has to be explained. Hadee Engineering [217] requires a plan, in no particular form, but expects some record or, failing that, a detailed explanation of the uncertainty and the activities designed to resolve it. Tanglewood Care Services [87] requires no formally documented plan, and Environmental Services accepted an unwritten one on that fact pattern [86], nothing showing it aimed at scientific uncertainties [85].

On the old scheme, a customer paying a commercial price neither subsidised the work nor contracted it out. Quinn (London) [47] held that on those contracts section 1138(1)(c) needs a clear link between price and R&D expenditure. Collins Construction [53] agreed, finding at [67(4)] no bargain for the contractor to undertake R&D for the client; Stage One Creative Services [209] followed, and Perenco [74], an Upper Tribunal petroleum revenue tax case, by analogy. These are findings on particular contracts, not a rule. For periods beginning on or after 1 April 2024 subsidised expenditure no longer reduces relief; the question is whether the customer intended or contemplated that R&D of that sort would be undertaken.

Costs have to be evidenced; a tribunal will not apportion without evidence of what they bought. Flame Tree Publishing [73] found no evidential basis for the quantum of any employee cost claimed, an additional reason for refusal [76]. Environmental Services held in the alternative [102] that hired plant was no consumable item [105], and would not apportion without that evidence [106].

A claim can fail on the statute or on procedure, before the science. Strictly Money [37] found the main activity was not a trade, and [38] that its only trade was a sideline the £1.4 million was not spent for, so section 54 barred it [39]. Realbuzz Group [147] barred a discovery assessment where the hypothetical officer should reasonably have been aware the single claim was excessive; Tills Plus [28] let HMRC defend a closure notice on a ground it never gave.

Why case law matters when a claim is challenged

An HMRC enquiry is an argument about the same handful of statutory tests every time, and the tribunal decisions are where those tests have been argued out on real facts. An officer who says the competent professional is not qualified in the right field is making the point that decided Flame Tree Publishing. An officer who says a customer’s payments subsidised the work is making the point HMRC lost in Collins Construction and then withdrew from its own manual. Knowing which is which — and which way the decision went — is the difference between a defence and a concession.

The same decisions work in the other direction, before anything is filed. Most claims that fail at a tribunal were unwinnable on the day they were signed: no contemporaneous plan, no time records, nobody qualified in the field the advance was claimed in. Those are cheap to fix at the start of a claim and impossible to fix at a hearing. That is the practical value of reading them.

Find the decision by the argument you are having

The competent professional. Flame Tree Publishing — a publisher who knew publishing but not software — is the decision officers and later tribunals reach for, and Get Onbord is the one that accepted a witness with no formal qualification in the field. Environmental Services is the counterweight, on the formulation HMRC put to that tribunal out of Flame Tree: a director who ran the business was refused, and a yard foreman with City & Guilds and an ONC in motor vehicle engineering was accepted.

Subsidised expenditure and contracted-out R&D. Collins Construction and Stage One Creative Services settled the point against HMRC, following Quinn (London) on the subsidy limb, and Hadee Engineering is the older decision the other way that they have overtaken.

Going concern. MW High Tech Projects is the only decision we have found on the condition: an RDEC claim of £1,934,343.19 was extinguished because the latest published accounts were not prepared on a going concern basis.

Consumables, and equipment you hire. Environmental Services is the only decision we have found on the point, and it reached both limbs in the alternative: even if the projects had qualified, hired plant and machinery was not a consumable item, because it was not consumed in the R&D, and the tribunal would not apportion expenditure on a just and reasonable basis to rescue a claim that had not evidenced what the costs were for.

Enquiry, closure notices and discovery. Realbuzz Group and Stage One Creative Services are the discovery decisions; Assembly Global Networks decides when an enquiry notice is validly served; Tills Plus holds a closure notice does not confine HMRC to the reason it gave.

Getting the appeal to the right place. BW Interiors was struck out because the appeal went straight to the tribunal instead of to HMRC first.

Penalties. H & H Contract Scaffolding is the only decision we have found on a Schedule 24 penalty attached to an R&D claim, and the company won: the failure of the claim did not itself prove carelessness.

Project boundaries, and what counts as a field of science. Hadee Engineering requires a plan and a methodology you can point to; Environmental Services is the decision holding that the plan need not be written down, and that this on its own saves nothing. M&C Educational Training Services holds that an advance in education is not an advance in science, and Tanglewood Care Services measures the advance against the field, not the company — a reading Environmental Services adopts.

Attestations, and who signs them. Strictly Money shows what an attestation is worth when the signatory was not part of the work.

What a First-tier Tribunal decision can and cannot do

It cannot change the law. First-tier Tribunal decisions bind only the parties to them and set no precedent, so a company losing on its facts puts no sector outside the relief, and a company winning does not open a door for anyone else.

What they carry is weight: HMRC officers argue from them, and later tribunals cite them. Where no onward appeal is reported and HMRC rewrites its guidance to match — as happened after Collins Construction and Stage One Creative Services — the practical effect is as real as a change in the law, even though nothing in the statute moved. How a dispute travels from a closure notice to a hearing is set out in how do I appeal an HMRC decision on an R&D claim?.

Each entry states the direction explicitly: who won, on which point, and what remains unsettled. Where a decision has been overtaken by later cases or by the merged scheme, the entry says so rather than leave a reader applying a dead rule.

What the register does not contain

Three absences are facts about the field rather than gaps in this register. As at 15 September 2026:

There is no reported decision on claim notification, the additional information form, the merged scheme, ERIS or the PAYE cap. Every decided case is an old-scheme case. For the rules that now apply, see claim notification, the additional information form and the merged scheme.

We have found no Upper Tribunal decision determining an R&D tax relief appeal, and no reported R&D decision other than MW High Tech Projects that turns on an RDEC claim. The two Upper Tribunal decisions in the register do not change that: one refuses permission to appeal, the other decides a petroleum revenue tax case.

One change to HMRC’s published guidance, across two pages, has been attributed to a tribunal decision. The CIRD manual’s dated change log carries a single such date across 2023 to 2026: 27 February 2025, when CIRD81650 and CIRD84250 were both amended following the subsidised and contracted-out decisions. Neither page names a case.

Decisions we name but hold no entry on

The register below holds one row per decision we hold a full entry on. Six more are named without an entry of their own, and this is what each of them is named for.

The register

Every decision we hold an entry on, newest first. The case name opens our entry; the citation opens the decision itself.

Register last updated 20 September 2026. It is updated when decisions land, and when a decision already listed is appealed or overturned.

Written by Matthew Jones ACA CTA. Last reviewed September 2026.