Who it's for

You might be eligible if you build software and solve genuinely hard technical problems.

The R&D Tax Incentive rewards exactly the kind of work good engineering teams do every week: building something where the answer was not known in advance, and you had to experiment to find it. Here is how to tell in under a minute.

The four-question self-check

Answer these honestly. Four yeses means you are a strong candidate.

1. Are you an Australian company?

Incorporated in Australia (a Pty Ltd), or a foreign company with an Australian permanent establishment, paying Australian income tax. Sole traders, partnerships and trusts do not qualify.
2. Do you build software in-house?

You have your own engineering team writing code, and that work lives in GitHub. We read your development history to find your R&D, so a real code trail matters.
3. Are you solving problems where the outcome was not obvious?

The incentive is for technical uncertainty: building something a competent engineer could not just look up or buy, where you had to experiment to get there. Not routine coding, bug fixes, config, or wiring together off-the-shelf tools.
4. Do you spend at least $20,000 a year on this work?

That is the minimum eligible R&D spend. Mostly it is engineering salaries for time on the hard problems.

Answer all four to see where you stand. 0 of 4 so far.

What good-fit work looks like

You are likely a good fit if you are:

A SaaS or platform company building novel features, not just standard CRUD apps.
A team doing AI/ML, data engineering, or algorithm work that pushes past existing tools.
Building performance, scale, or reliability solutions where the approach was not a known quantity.
Working on hardware, firmware, IoT, fintech infrastructure, biotech tooling, or deep-tech.
A startup or scale-up that prototyped, hit walls, reworked the approach, and eventually cracked it.

The tell is simple: "We were not sure it could be done the way we needed, so we had to try a few things to find out."

Industries we see most: SaaS and platforms, AI/ML and data, fintech infrastructure, deep-tech and hardware-adjacent, biotech tooling.

When it is not a fit (and we will tell you)

Not a company (sole trader, partnership, trust).
No Australian tax presence.
Under $20,000 of eligible R&D activity a year.
Routine work only: standard websites, configuring an existing platform, integrations, maintenance, or reproducing what already exists.
No code history to draw on.
Looking for a "maximise my claim" shortcut. We stay deliberately conservative.

Four yeses? Let's build the number.

Estimate your claim

You might be eligible if you build software and solve genuinely hard technical problems.

The four-question self-check

1. Are you an Australian company?

2. Do you build software in-house?

3. Are you solving problems where the outcome was not obvious?

4. Do you spend at least $20,000 a year on this work?

What good-fit work looks like

When it is not a fit (and we will tell you)

Four yeses? Let's build the number.