FAQ.

Up to €1Mio per year per company is available, €5Mio over 5years. This funding from the Finanzamt is non-debt and non-dilutive. It is provided to support you to engage in innovative projects.

Forschungszulage unlike other grants and subsidies can be back-claimed to January 2020. In other words your company potentially has a large untapped reservoir of funding available for innovative work you have already carried out, waiting to be unlocked.

We work on a success fee only basis. There is no risk from working with us. We take all the risk, applying our own resources and Technical Team to work for you and if we are not successful we do not charge a fee.

We have a Team of Technical Experts across all sectors including software, fintech, AI, IoT, smart factories, aerospace, data-science, legal-tech, property-tech and more. We do more than simply help with submission of the application for Forschungszulage. Our Technical Experts identify your innovative projects, help create a multi-year Innovation Plan, and also supports you on the journey following approval to monitor and maintain your projects successfully to maximise the financial support available from Forschungszulage.

Yes, Forschungszulage includes all types and sizes of companies. Some will have R&D departments, others will not. The requirement is that your company carries out innovative work rather than R&D / fundamental research as it is traditionally understood. Innovative work is defined by the Frascati Manual, and it includes social research and non-science projects which other jurisdictions exclude. The criteria we look for in your projects are Novelty, Creativity, Uncertainty, Systematization, Repeatability.

We understand that the main driver for many companies is working towards solving problems and staying ahead of the competition rather than considering innovation or research as a separate topic. We review the work within your company and take care of the innovation strategy for you. We prepare a report and an innovation roadmap which unlocks the tax credits or cash for you.

We require 3-4months to prepare your innovation strategy and to submit your Forschungszulage application. In total we need 1-2 days of time with your Team during that period. We deploy our Team of technical experts to do all of the heavy lifting, benchmarking your innovation within your industry and creating a multi-year plan to unlock as much funding as we can. We are technologists rather than steuerberaters or administrators so we understand the concepts and innovation across most industries meaning we take up less of your time.

It usually takes 2-3mths for an approval / refusal.

96% of our applications are approved. Our clients awards are often x10 times larger than those prepared by themselves or with the support of other service providers due to our experience in Germany and Internationally and because of our innovation first approach and accountancy second.

It does not matter whether you are loss making or profit making. The benefit is the same. So whether you are an early stage company which is scaling or your company is suffering due to COVID-19 and is no longer profitable, we will claim cash on a 1:1 ratio to tax credits.

You can claim 25% of all spend on payroll and 15% of contractor costs in the EU, who are working on your innovation projects.

No, our advice relates to the FZulG only and does not include assistance on tax matters. Tax consultants and other professionals are authorized in accordance with Section 3 of the StBerG. We provide support for FZulG in cooperation with Steuerberaters.

We can claim for each subsidiary, but the total claim for the group is €1Mio per year. If your mother company does not have a controlling interest in some of the subsidiaries we may be able to make more than a single maximum claim of €1Mio.

We provide a full suite of innovation services including design sprints, gnat charts, innovation ideation, patent audit & creation, grant application, fundraising advice which is available to most of our clients as part of our success fee only model.