R&D tax relief •3 min read

Get Onbord Ltd v HMRC

MJ

Matthew Jones ACA CTA

Last reviewed September 2026 · Editorial standards

Tribunal
First-tier Tribunal (Tax Chamber)
Decided
9 July 2024
Judge
Judge Mark Baldwin and Mr Mohammed Farooq

The company won. A tribunal accepted that an artificial intelligence and machine learning project to automate KYC verification was R&D, and accepted a competent professional who held no formal qualification in the field. It is the decision most often cited by software and AI claimants, and it is narrower than it is usually made to sound.

What was at issue

Get Onbord Limited — by the time of the decision, in liquidation, with the appeal continued by its joint liquidators — had claimed an R&D tax credit under section 1054 CTA 2009 for building an automated process to verify identity and profile risk for “know your client” (KYC) checks.

HMRC raised one objection and only one: that the work did not advance overall knowledge or capability in the field, so it was not R&D within the Guidelines. Two questions sat inside that. Could the company’s witness, a former director with no formal qualification in the field, speak as a competent professional? And did building on open-source and existing components mean nothing had been advanced?

What the tribunal decided

The appeal was allowed (paragraph 98). The project was R&D within the Guidelines, and the company was entitled to claim.

On the person: the tribunal recorded that the witness had no formal qualifications in the area, then said it was “completely satisfied” that he had experience, coding included, and up-to-date knowledge of software capabilities, “albeit perhaps only in the area he works in” (paragraph 82). Experience and current knowledge carried it; the certificate was not the test.

On the technology: solving a real-world problem in a new way using technology was at least an indication of an appreciable advance (paragraph 93). Each component of the solution did not have to be new in itself (paragraph 94). What mattered was that the technology the company set out to build was “not already publicly available or readily deducible” (paragraph 95).

The part people over-read

At paragraph 96 the tribunal touched on the evidential burden shifting to HMRC once a claimant has put forward a credible case. It is regularly quoted as though it settled something. It did not: the tribunal decided the appeal on the balance of probabilities in any event, so the remark carries no weight as part of the reasoning.

Nor is this a decision that AI projects qualify. It is a decision that this project, on this evidence, did. HMRC had conceded everything except the advance, so the case never tested costs, records or apportionment — the grounds on which claims are more often lost.

What it changes for a claim being prepared now

Three things are worth taking from it.

  • A competent professional is made by expertise, not by paperwork. A self-taught engineer with current, demonstrable command of the field can be the right person. What the tribunal wanted was evidence of that command, given by the person themselves.
  • Building on open source does not disqualify the work. The question is whether the capability you set out to create was already publicly available or readily deducible by a competent professional — not whether every part was new.
  • Say what was not deducible, and why. That sentence is the claim. “We combined existing tools in a new way” is not it; “a competent professional in this field could not have derived this from what was published” is.

Where AI work does and does not qualify is set out at more length in our article on machine learning and qualifying R&D, and the person question in who counts as a competent professional.

Has it been appealed?

No onward appeal has been reported. There is no Upper Tribunal decision in the case on the published record. Applications for permission to appeal are not published, so that is not proof that none was made.

The decision is First-tier Tribunal: it binds only the parties and sets no precedent. Read alongside Flame Tree Publishing, which refused a claim because nobody could speak for the software, the two decisions are consistent — one had the right person, the other did not.

Sources

The judgment states no accounting period and no claim figure, so neither is given here.

First-tier Tribunal decisions bind only the parties to them and set no precedent. This entry describes the decision as it stood at the review date above, as general information rather than advice on your circumstances — see our terms. For an answer on your own facts, talk to us.