A competent professional is someone with relevant qualifications or experience, or both, in the specific field of science or technology the project sits in. The concept anchors the whole R&D definition: work qualifies where it seeks to resolve uncertainty that a competent professional in the field could not readily resolve, so every claim needs at least one identifiable person against whose knowledge that test is applied.
What the role actually involves
The competent professional’s job in a claim is to identify the scientific or technological uncertainties and explain why a professional working in the field could not readily resolve them. That means describing what was already known or deducible in the field, why the project’s problems went beyond it, and what had to be worked out through the R&D itself. This is a technical judgement, not a tax one, which is why it has to come from your team rather than your adviser: we shape and test the account, but the expertise it rests on is the company’s.
The field matters. Competence is judged in the specific field of the uncertainty, so a highly experienced software architect is not a competent professional on a fermentation problem, and vice versa. Projects that span disciplines often need more than one professional’s input for the claim to hold together.
Do they need formal qualifications?
Formal academic qualifications are not a strict legal requirement: HMRC’s own guidance defines a competent professional as someone suitably qualified or experienced in the field, and in fast-moving fields deep practical experience can be exactly what competence looks like. But the bar HMRC sets is higher than time served. Its guidance expects three things together: knowledge of the relevant scientific or technological principles, awareness of the current state of knowledge in the field as a whole, and accumulated experience with a track record — and it warns in terms that having worked in a field, or having an intelligent interest in it, does not by itself make someone a competent professional. Strong credentials make all three easier to evidence, which matters, because the account has to survive questioning: HMRC checked around one in six claims in 2023-24, its latest published figure.
The Additional Information Form’s project questions are built around this judgement — HMRC’s guidance on answering the uncertainties question asks why a competent professional in the field could not readily resolve them — so identify yours early, before drafting starts rather than after. A claim written first and attributed to a professional afterwards tends to read that way.
Where to go next
The competent professional test is one strand of the statutory definition; our guide to what counts as qualifying R&D covers the rest, including the advance and uncertainty tests the professional’s account has to support. If you are unsure whether anyone in your team fits the description, that is worth resolving before a claim is prepared, and we will give you a straight answer.
Written by Matthew Jones ACA CTA. Last reviewed July 2026.
Sources
- Guidelines on the meaning of R&D for tax purposes — the definition the competent professional test sits inside.
- GfC3: the importance of a competent professional — HMRC’s three attributes and its warning about the bar.
- Submit detailed information before you claim — the AIF’s project questions the professional’s account has to answer.
This page describes the rules as they stood at the review date above, as general information rather than advice on your circumstances. For how that distinction works, see our terms; for an answer on your own facts, talk to us.