Rising Sea Levels Aren’t the Only Oceanic Problem

The tide of plastic pollution in the seas came to public attention when it was highlighted on David Attenborough’s Blue Planet series.

Research into ways of preventing and cleaning up pollution and lowering the carbon footprint of businesses and consumers in order to prevent global warming is a huge priority.

Many businesses have projects, or elements of projects, that are trying to address these problems. Yet very few companies that are working with renewables and recyclables, or that are focused on improving energy efficiency in products, are taking advantage of the tax reliefs that are available to them. This means that they’re having to fund their R&D wholly from operating income and are also paying too much tax or unable to convert tax losses into cash.

The Green Growth Platform

The Green Growth Platform at the University of Brighton is dedicated to helping businesses that have a sustainability element to move to the next level of business growth. They have access to R&D funding for environmentally responsible projects.

In addition, Cooden Tax Consulting, experts at claiming R&D tax credits on behalf of client businesses, are offering reduced fees for green businesses that want help in claiming relief for green projects and research.

Together, these initiatives provide an opportunity for businesses to fund research into more environmentally sustainable products and services and to benefit from the assistance of a specialist in claiming back significant tax credits.

Is your Innovation “Green”?

If you are running a “Green” business and you are keen to prepare a Research and Development Tax Credits claim, we’ll do it for you at a significantly reduced rate of 12.5% of the tax saving if you sign up with us at any time, which is a 50% discount on our normal rates. Likewise, if you have a Patent for your “Green” technology, we’ll help you access the “Patent Box”.

If you’re interested, please get in touch on 01424 225345 or email us 

The post Research Grants and Tax Allowances Help Fund Green R&D appeared first on Cooden Tax Consulting.

Celebrating our first Research and Development Tax Relief Millionaire

We are very proud to say that as of this month we have managed so save one of our clients, an IT Services provider over £1 million in R&D tax relief in just two years of working with them. A nice little Christmas present for everyone!

As we acknowledged in our previous blog, there has been a tremendous boom in the technology sector, particularly in the South East of England in the recent years. We here at Cooden Tax Consulting have been working tirelessly with businesses in this sector to help them realise their potential and claim back the Research and Development (R&D) Tax Relief that they rightfully deserve.

How Can Cooden Tax Consulting Help You?

We could do the very same thing for your business by using the following three pieces of Government Tax legislation:

• Research and Development Tax Relief
• Patent Box
• Video Games Tax Relief

Research and Development Tax Relief

We largely focus on R&D Tax Relief, a scheme implemented by the Government in 2000 to give business owners confidence in investing in Research and Development for the benefit of their company. Under R&D Tax Relief, companies can either reduce their tax bill or in the event that the R&D spend creates a loss companies can claim back up to 33.35% of R&D spend on their own internal projects and 8.8% of R&D spend for subcontracted or subsidised projects, all in cash as R&D Tax Credits.

Granted, in order to be an R&D Tax Relief Millionaire you have got to have spent it to get it, but interestingly our Technology Millionaire knew about the R&D Tax Relief scheme and as an IBM Platinum partner, was already claiming for some of their own internal R&D projects, but they weren’t aware that their subcontracted customer work also qualified. It was the work that they were being paid to do that has contributed the most to their millionaire status.

Astonishingly, around 80% of businesses are currently unaware of the substantial amounts of money that they could be saving in R&D Tax Relief.

Patent Box

Introduced by the Government in April of 2013, this initiative has been designed to complement other forms of R&D Tax Relief and focuses on encouraging business owners to make profits through their patents, ultimately reducing the amount of tax paid on profits. You could be eligible if you own a patent that is granted by:

• The UK Intellectual Property Office
• The European Patent Office
• The National Patent Office of most countries with the EAA

Read more about Patent Box

Video Games Tax Relief

As the name suggests, this initiative is specifically aimed at Video Games Developers that are susceptible to corporation tax and are directly involved in the development of ‘British’ video games. Further to this, the video game that has been developed must be intended for supply with 25% of core expenditure being spent on goods or services that are provided from within the EEA.

Read more about Video Games Tax Relief

Let Cooden Tax Consulting help your business!

For more information, call one of our friendly consultants today on 01424 225 345 or email us at info@coodentaxconsulting.co.uk . We look forward to hearing from you!

The post Celebrating our first Research & Development Tax Relief Millionaire appeared first on Cooden Tax Consulting.

Having joined Growth Accelerator on the cusp of its demise in November last year, our initial coaching sessions have already identified the need for an experienced report writer to join the team, we are now working on a job description and getting contracts drawn up in anticipation of our new hire.

The next step with Growth Accelerator will be the development of a strategic Sales and Marketing plan that we can hopefully take forward to support our first visit as an exhibitor to the country’s largest Exhibition tailored for Accountants, Tax Advisors, Finance Directors and other Senior Finance Professionals.

We have also teamed up with Ditzy Media to help develop an ongoing Social Media Marketing Campaign in advance of Accountex and hopefully beyond.

We also are looking to continue our strategic partnerships with other Tax Consultancies offering R&D Tax Relief and Patent Box calculations to clients further afield, these partnerships have led to a number of new and significant pieces of work for R&D Tax Credit claims covering Automotive and Software in the West Midlands, Software & Manufacturing in Yorkshire and Clinical Research in Norfolk. It will also see the company working as a specialist advisor to a major accountancy, tax and finance advisory business.

Looking back to this time last year we are amazed at the progress our Sussex-based R&D Tax Relief Consultancy has made in its second full year of trading. We have completed the refresh of the company’s website, logo and image from its very humble beginnings on 1&1 My Website to a bespoke and extremely professional looking website on WordPress and our professionally designed logo. Our own client base has increased significantly and our work has led to nearly £2m worth of R&D Tax Credits being recovered for SME businesses across the country.

One of our clients who benefitted from an R&D grant and for whom we prepared a claim for Research and Development Expenditure Credit (RDEC) following a meeting at our quarterly residence at Tech Hub in London, also won a very prestigious award towards the end of the year, hopefully we will be able to share more of this with you in the future.

We remain extremely grateful to our clients and our bank of referrers in London and across the South-East who have trusted us to provide them with our expert advice and services and we look forward to continuing these mutually beneficial relationships. Hopefully we will all be able to continue to grow together.

We also look forward to developing new relationships with some of our key suppliers and advisors, such as Mina O’Brien (www.ditzymedia.co.uk), David Ruddle (www.thebestof.co.uk/local/eastbourne), Phil Burrowes (www.avantcommercial.com), Drew Sayer (www.neptunemedia.co.uk) ,  Heather Okines (www.Fairbook.co.uk) Kellie Knight (www.knightaccountants.co.uk), Martin Riley (www.martin-riley.co.uk) and Emma Pearce (www.pearcemarketing.co.uk)

I can only hope that 2016 contributes half as much excitement as 2015 otherwise I don’t know how I might cope.

The post An interesting year ahead for our niche R&D Tax Relief Consultancy appeared first on Cooden Tax Consulting.