Investing in innovation

Innovation drives productivity, boosts growth and contributes to communities worldwide. It also sits at the heart of every organization’s sustainability efforts. But innovation needs capital. The EY Quantitative Services teams help businesses access sources of cash through grants, tax credits and fixed asset/cost segregation claims. 

Related topics Growth Tax planning

What EY can do for you

Governments worldwide offer grants and tax incentives to help fund initiatives that align with policy goals. Those goals are often targeted at job creation in economically-deprived areas, and, increasingly, at carbon capture and storage, as well as supporting the transition to renewable energy sources. As businesses work to fund their growth and innovation, many look for professional support to identify and secure appropriate sources of cash.

EY Quantitative Services (QS) professionals combine their tax and law knowledge with backgrounds in a wide range of technical, science and engineering fields, helping them to help organizations unlock the full range of funding opportunities that are available.

We help you make sense of the evolving funding landscape and tell your company’s innovation story. And our support doesn’t end there – we can also assist through the ongoing project management and compliance.

EY services include:

  • Help identify and claim R&D tax credits for past and future innovations

    As jurisdictions look to science and technology to prime their economies, many have renewed, expanded or refocused their R&D incentive programs. Benefitting from these regimes requires a deep understanding of the definition of R&D for tax purposes, and how this applies to activities and projects taking place across the business. We help to:

    • Identify eligible projects within the organization – both current and historic (in jurisdictions where retrospective claims are permitted).
    • Align innovation and R&D projects to the relevant incentives.
    • Draft consortium agreements for large-scale R&D and innovation projects.
    • Prepare and file the appropriate claims.
  • Help identify and apply for relevant grant funding

    In contrast to R&D tax credits, grants are usually discretionary and often highly competitive, meaning only the best applications succeed. We help to:
    • Propose and continually scan the market for appropriate innovation grants.
    • Write and submit a compelling, detailed grant application which fully aligns with the fund’s objectives.
    • Respond to requests for further information from the grant body, including supporting through the due diligence process.
  • Comply with ongoing funding milestones

    In complex grant-funded innovation projects, we help manage risk down and compliance up. We can:

    • Review and advise on planned, ongoing and closed projects’ compliance.
    • Develop financial statements compliant with relevant rules and regulations.
    • Certify grant-related expenditures and projects’ cost-calculation methodologies in accordance with applicable legal frameworks.
  • Help identify fixed asset management and cost segregation savings

    When multinational companies hold assets in multiple jurisdictions, their fixed assets registers can quickly run into millions of lines of data.  Acquisitions, disposals, transfers and cost adjustments during the year, combined with ever-changing tax rules, can easily lead to coding errors. To identify cost saving opportunities, our fixed assets teams use bespoke technology, where appropriate, to:
    • Ingest, cleanse and format fixed asset data.
    • Segregate real estate assets according to depreciation classes.
    • Apply appropriate jurisdictional rules.
    • Perform relevant calculations.
    • Prepare the final report.

Investing in innovation 

ALPS Ecoscience’s Commercial Director, Alan Beesley, outlines how working with the EY organization has changed the direction of his business and explains how small organizations can benefit from the strategic and collaborative approach of EY teams. 

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Worldwide R&D Incentives Reference Guide 

The Worldwide R&D Incentives Reference Guide offers taxpayers the information necessary to identify and assist to leverage opportunities to benefit from available incentives, especially relevant if they are contemplating new or expanded investments in R&D, innovation and sustainability.

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