24th March 2022
In the Chancellor’s 2022 Spring Statement, Rishi Sunak responded to feedback in relation to the proposed changes to R&D tax relief, indicating that the scope of R&D is to set to expand to cover data and cloud computing costs. More specifically the Chancellor outlined that all cloud costs which facilitate R&D activities, including storage, will become eligible in 2023.
This will also cover dataset licence payments for any qualifying R&D project, staffing costs to collect, cleanse and analyse data for R&D, as well as attributed software costs. Additionally, pure mathematics will also be covered.
The prospect of restrictions on overseas R&D will go ahead in 2023; however, the government stated it is aware there are cases that require R&D to occur overseas and acknowledged key exceptions where it is necessary for R&D activity to be completed outside the UK. This includes material factors for research subjects located outwith the UK and instances where R&D activities are required to take place outside the UK for legal reasons.
