Corporation Tax Act 2009 section 1064

R&D threshold

Section 1064 sets out the minimum amount of qualifying research and development expenditure a company must incur in an accounting period in order to claim relief under this Chapter.

• A company must incur at least £10,000 of qualifying R&D expenditure in an accounting period to claim relief under this Chapter.
• If the accounting period is shorter than 12 months, the £10,000 threshold is reduced proportionately using a specific arithmetic formula based on the length of the period.
• Pre-trading expenditure is treated under the normal rules, meaning it is bunched into the accounting period in which the trade starts and counts towards the threshold for that period.
• This treatment of pre-trading expenditure differs from the approach under section 1050, where the normal pre-trading expenditure rules are suspended.