What is r&d tax incentive support?
The AusIndustry registration prepared on deadline and the substantiation file built through the year — the offset itself is claimed in the company return.
The R&D Tax Incentive splits into two steps run by two different administrators, and the split is the whole shape of the work. AusIndustry, part of the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, registers a company's R&D activities each year through the R&DTI customer portal — that registration is what makes a claim possible at all, and it has to happen within 10 months of the end of the income year the work was done in. The ATO then processes the tax offset itself, claimed as a schedule attached to the company tax return, quoting the registration number AusIndustry issued. A company can have genuinely eligible R&D spend and still get nothing if the registration step is missed or filed late — the offset doesn't exist independent of the registration.
Because the programme runs on self-assessment, registration confirms AusIndustry accepted the application, not that the underlying activities are eligible. Both AusIndustry and the ATO can review a self-assessed claim after the fact, sometimes years later, which means the file that supports a claim has to hold up on its own — core activities described against the legislated definition (a systematic progression of hypothesis, experiment, observation, evaluation, conclusion, aimed at generating new knowledge whose outcome can't be known in advance), and supporting activities identified separately with a clear link back to the core work they relate to.
Who does what
CapEasy prepares the AusIndustry registration and the substantiation file; eligibility advice and the offset claim in the company return are your registered tax agent’s.
Who does what
| Your CapEasy team | R&D Tax Incentive support, the reconciliations and reporting behind it, and the questions list that keeps it honest. |
| Your registered BAS or tax agent | Everything that carries a licence in Australia — rendered exactly as written: work out what goes on your bas, or advise you on it — under tasa 2009 that requires registration we do not hold. |
| You | One conversation with one named person, and the decisions that are genuinely yours. |
R&D Tax Incentive support in Australia
Registration and the tax-offset claim are two different gates, not one step
AusIndustry registers the R&D activities; the ATO processes the offset claim, lodged as a schedule inside the company tax return once registration is confirmed. Preparing and lodging that schedule for a fee is a tax agent service under the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 — only a Tax Practitioners Board-registered tax agent can lawfully do it, and unregistered preparation or lodgment for a fee is a contravention of a civil penalty provision. The AusIndustry registration paperwork itself carries no such stated TPB gate, which is why CapEasy can prepare and coordinate that registration directly while the claim itself still has to go through your registered tax agent.
The 10-month registration deadline has no discretion to extend
R&D activities have to be registered with AusIndustry within 10 months of the end of the income year in which the work was conducted — 30 April 2027 for a standard FY2025–26 year. This is not a soft target: genuinely eligible R&D spend that misses the window has no offset available for that year, and there is no late-registration pathway to fall back on. Because it runs on a different calendar from the company tax return itself (due 31 October self-lodged, or extended under the agent lodgment program), the registration clock needs its own tracking rather than being bundled into year-end tax work.
Core and supporting activities are legally distinct categories, and have to be registered as such
A core R&D activity is experimental work carried out to generate new knowledge, where the outcome can't be known or determined in advance and can only be worked out by following a systematic progression — hypothesis, experiment, observation, evaluation, conclusion. Supporting activities are work directly related to a core activity but don't meet that test on their own, and AusIndustry's registration requires them to be identified and described separately, not grouped into the core activity's narrative. Registering a supporting task as though it were core (or vice versa) is a common way a self-assessed claim doesn't survive later scrutiny.
Because the programme is self-assessed, the substantiation file is what a later review actually tests
Registration is AusIndustry accepting that the application was submitted, not a finding that the activities are eligible — both AusIndustry and the ATO retain the right to review a self-assessed claim after the fact. What that review tests is the evidence: records showing the systematic progression of work followed for each core activity, and documentation of how each supporting activity genuinely relates to its core. That evidence has to be contemporaneous — created while the work happened — because material reconstructed after the fact, close to a registration or claim deadline, carries far less weight if the claim is ever queried.
What your registered BAS or tax agent receives from us
- A drafted set of core and supporting R&D activity descriptions, built from project records, engineering logs, and sprint or lab documentation, structured to the systematic-progression test AusIndustry's registration requires.
- A contemporaneous substantiation file assembled as the R&D happens through the year — not reconstructed near the registration deadline — organised by activity so it is ready to support the registration and any later review.
- The completed AusIndustry registration submission through the R&DTI customer portal, filed against the current-year's income-year end plus the 10-month window, with the registration number returned once issued.
- A tracked deadline entry for the 10-month registration cutoff, sequenced on its own calendar independent of the company tax return's own due dates, so it is never discovered late.
- Where relevant, the supporting documentation for an overseas finding application, covering any R&D expenditure incurred outside Australia before that spend is claimed.
- A handoff file — the registration confirmation, the registration number, and the underlying substantiation records — passed to your registered tax agent for the eligibility review and the offset claim inside the company tax return.
