Communications Sector R&D Tax Incentive Case Study
As part of a large multinational, Teltech has access to research and development teams across the globe. Commercial conditions dictate that much of the new product development occurs in overseas entities and Teltech must take these new products and introduce them for the first time to the Australian market.
Teltech has historically made R&D tax claims, under the old R&D Tax Concession program and more recently the R&D Tax Incentive program, however the quantum of these claims has traditionally been small and in isolated areas of the business.
NOAH was engaged by Teltech to unpack potential new areas of R&D tax claim. In the first year of engagement, NOAH conducted presentations on the program across multiple arms of the business to Program and Technical Managers. The presentations were designed to encourage discussion and solicit feedback on existing approaches to claim.
NOAH was able to successfully challenge entrenched views within the company regarding the eligibility of its activities against the R&D Tax criteria. NOAH helped to demystify the language of the R&D Tax Incentive program and explained how a “hypothesis” was really no more than a “proposition” or “conjecture” that was put forward and then tested in some way meaningful to the business. NOAH also facilitated a discussion around the notion of “new knowledge” and helped Teltech understand that it might be sufficient that the knowledge is new to the company in circumstances where it is not otherwise available in the public domain or on normal commercial terms.
With NOAH’s encouragement, Teltech became more willing to reassess its approach to R&D tax, and subsequently found that its claim levels increased more than 10-fold.
