The offset is refundable, the deadline has no extensions and the records have to be written at the time. Here is how to keep them.
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The R&D Tax Incentive is usually the largest source of non-dilutive funding for a loss-making Australian startup, and it is refundable. It is also the programme most often lost on administration. The records have to be written while the work happens, and the registration deadline has no extensions.
This is general information, not advice. CatenaHQ is software. Nothing on this page is legal, financial, tax or investment advice, and it does not take account of your circumstances. Speak to a lawyer, accountant or other qualified adviser about your own position.
For entities with aggregated turnover under $20 million: company tax rate plus an 18.5% premium. For a base rate entity at 25% that is 43.5%, paid as cash to a company in loss.
Within 10 months of the end of your income year. For a 30 June year end that is 30 April. There are no extensions, and a missed deadline loses the whole year.
$20,000 of eligible R&D expenditure in the income year, unless the work is done through a registered Research Service Provider.
Core activities are experimental work whose outcome cannot be known in advance. Writing a complicated feature using known techniques is engineering, not R&D.
These are from the R&D Tax Incentive guide, which also covers the changes announced for 1 July 2028. They are announced measures, not yet law.
The claim is lodged once a year, but the evidence has to exist all year. A narrative assembled in April to describe the previous July is the weakest position in a review. The record has to show the uncertainty, the hypothesis and the experiment, written at the time. Time across staff and contractors has to be traceable, and “roughly 70% of the dev team” is not an apportionment method.
CatenaHQ does not lodge the claim, register with AusIndustry or apply for grants on your behalf. Your accountant does the arithmetic, and eligibility of specific activities is a technical question to have assessed.
The tracker is part of the governance and grants modules, and is included in the paid plans on the pricing page.
The rates, deadline and thresholds come from CatenaHQ’s R&D Tax Incentive guide, which is written from ATO pages and current as at October 2026. The product points come from the grants module page, the product tour and the pricing page.
Your company tax rate plus an 18.5% premium for entities with aggregated turnover under $20 million. For a base rate entity taxed at 25%, that is 43.5%, and it is refundable, paid as cash to a company in loss.
You must register your R&D activities with AusIndustry within 10 months of the end of your income year. For a 30 June year end that is 30 April. The deadline is absolute, with no extensions.
$20,000 of eligible R&D expenditure in the income year, unless the work is done through a registered Research Service Provider.
No. CatenaHQ is software. It tracks R&D projects, expenditure and evidence through the year and holds the deadline in your compliance calendar. Registration and the tax claim are made by the company with its adviser.
The Raising plan lists grants and the R&D tax incentive among its tools, and the Managing plan includes everything in Raising. The free plan does not include grant discovery.
Each of these is written from the Act and the regulations, or describes a module of the platform.
Rates, deadline, what counts and where claims come apart.
Eligibility matching, deadlines and evidence records.
The investor-side incentive for early stage companies.
Why the R&D record shares a system with the register and the board.