Each question below maps to a real condition of the Research Tax Credit scheme. Here is what it tests, and why it decides the outcome.
01 — Tax position
Corporation tax, or income tax under an actual-profit regime.
The CIR is set against tax due, and refunded where it exceeds that tax. It therefore assumes a company taxed in France under an actual-profit regime. There is no condition of size, age or sector: a loss-making company still qualifies and receives the credit in cash.
02 — Technical obstacle
An obstacle you had to overcome, not an adaptation of something that already worked.
This is the heart of the scheme. The tax authority does not fund effort or spending; it funds the resolution of an uncertainty that the available state of knowledge could not settle. Development that is demanding but under control throughout is not CIR work, though it may well be Innovation Tax Credit work.
03 — Experimental approach
How you got there counts as much as the result. Iterations, discarded hypotheses, documented trials: these are what demonstrate research. A failure helps you here: a project that never went wrong has rarely resolved much uncertainty.
04 — State of the art
Showing that a solution did not exist means having looked. This is the piece most often missing, and the first the tax authority asks for during an audit. If it was not put together at the time it can be reconstructed, and that is part of what we do.
05 — Where the work was done
The spending has to correspond to work carried out in France or within the European Economic Area. Work done outside that zone falls out of the claim, even when your French company is the one billing for it.
06 — People on the work
Engineers, researchers and technicians, with the time spent traceable.
Staff costs make up most of the claim, and the flat-rate overhead is added on top automatically. Tracking time, even roughly, therefore raises the claimable amount directly. Subcontracting qualifies, but only through approved bodies and within set ceilings.
