I am not a professional engineer, just a lowly technician, so I only receive your excellent publication second hand from a colleague. Therefore I may be somewhat behind the times on this issue, but it seems to me the sensible way to resolve the problem would be for tax credits to be granted whilst the R & D is carried out, and if it results in a commercially viable product the company pays a premium tax rate on any income received from the sale of the product. The book keeping should be straight forward and HMRC would get some or all of its money back.
Doug Hayman, Gouda, Western Cape
© PE Publishing, February 2010
