What was broken
An aviation-sector company needed growth capital and a funding application that presented its plan credibly to a seed-fund committee.
What we did
CapEasy prepared the seed-fund proposal — business plan, budget, and projections aligned to the scheme. We structured the application to the eligibility and permitted-spend rules.
Where it landed
The company secured a public seed-fund approval. A Seed Fund approval is the committee’s sanction; actual disbursement follows the scheme’s due-diligence and compliance milestones and is not guaranteed.
The R&D Tax Incentive is the closest analogue — and it runs on records, not a pitch
An aviation company doing genuine experimental work — new airframe modifications, avionics integration, propulsion or MRO process R&D — can register that work under the Research and Development Tax Incentive (R&DTI), jointly administered by AusIndustry and the ATO. Business.gov.au sets the mechanism out plainly: a company self-assesses whether its activities meet the core and supporting R&D activity definitions before registering, and can seek an advance finding for certainty. Eligibility is a self-assessment against the statutory definitions, checked by AusIndustry — the call sits with the company and the regulator, not with an adviser.
The offset itself is turnover-gated: entities with aggregated turnover under $20 million and not controlled by tax-exempt entities can access the refundable offset (company tax rate plus an 18.5% premium); larger entities get a non-refundable offset, tiered by R&D intensity — a lower premium on R&D spend up to the intensity threshold, a higher premium above it. The Australian Government announced changes to the R&DTI in the 2026–27 Budget, lifting the refundable-offset turnover threshold and narrowing refundability by company age — but those changes start from 1 July 2028, so the current-rules mechanism above is what applies to any claim being prepared now.
Registration has a hard deadline the committee analogue does not forgive
Where a Seed Fund approval turns on a committee reading a proposal once, the R&DTI turns on a statutory clock: registration of eligible R&D activities is due within 10 months of the end of the income year in which the activities were conducted, submitted through the R&D Tax Incentive customer portal. Extensions past that deadline are tightly limited and are assessed by AusIndustry case by case — a late request is not a formality. A grant window that closes is a familiar shape to a founder; a self-assessed registration deadline that closes the same way is the one most aviation businesses discover too late.
Once registered, the tax offset is claimed by entering the R&DTI registration number into the R&D Tax Incentive schedule of the company’s income tax return — a step for the registered tax agent, using the number our record set supports.
What "application-ready" records look like for R&D claims
AusIndustry and the ATO are explicit that R&D records must be contemporaneous — made at the time the work happened, not reconstructed afterwards. Two record streams have to tie together: expenditure documentation (tax invoices, asset registers, accounting records, staff timesheets showing hours by employee against each R&D activity) and activity documentation (project plans, test and progress reports, before/after evidence, technical results). Records created after the fact are not treated as adequate on their own, and the requirement to keep them runs 5 years from the year the expenditure is claimed.
This is where the engagement’s method transfers directly: the seed-fund proposal held up because budget lines traced to the scheme’s permitted-spend categories, not because the narrative was persuasive. An R&D claim holds up the same way — every dollar in the notional deduction traces to a timesheet or invoice against a registered activity, not to a plan written in hindsight. CapEasy’s part is that record set: timesheets coded to project, expenditure apportioned between eligible and ineligible work, and a project-cost ledger a registered tax agent can review against the R&DTI schedule before lodgment.
Sector-specific funding beyond the tax offset
Aviation businesses that touch regional airport infrastructure — not just airline or MRO operators, but contractors delivering runway, apron or safety works — sit inside a second program: the Regional Airports Program, run through business.gov.au for aerodrome owners and operators in Inner or Outer Regional areas. Recent rounds have funded eligible project costs up to 50% (reducing to roughly a third where a third party also co-contributes), with grants sized from $20,000 to several million dollars per round; rounds open and close on their own schedule, so current status is checked on the program page rather than assumed from a past round’s figures. What every round has asked for is the same: a costed work program, evidence of board or council approval, and financial records supporting the claimed project costs — the same project-accounting discipline the R&D claim needs, applied to a capital works budget instead of a notional deduction.
What to take from it
- A funding committee — whether a seed-fund panel or AusIndustry reviewing an R&D registration — approves a plan that ties to permitted-spend rules, not a persuasive narrative.
- R&DTI eligibility is self-assessed against the statutory activity definitions; an advance finding buys certainty before you register, not after.
- R&D registration is due 10 months after the income year ends, through the R&DTI customer portal — treat it as a hard deadline, because late requests are barely granted.
- R&D records must be contemporaneous: timesheets and project documentation created at the time, not reconstructed for the claim.
- Regional infrastructure grants like the Regional Airports Program ask for the same thing tax claims do — a costed work program with financial records behind every line, checked against whichever round is actually open.