Marketlend Academy: The Problem With Australia’s R&D Tax Incentive

Small and medium sized business don’t get a lot of tax incentives in Australia, both compared to larger firms and overseas competitors. One of the few SMEs can claim is the Australian Reasearch & Development tax incentive. But Marketlend CEO Leo Tyndall says the R&D tax incentive needs to be improved for SMEs. Watch the video or read the transcript below to find out how.

 

 

Video Transcript:

 

One of the issues than an SME has when they start up for the first one to, say, five years is that the only tax breaks that are available to get is if they’re determined to be an R&D company or something similar. Now ironically, if you’re an R&D company in Australia, unless you can prove that your R&D is out of Australia, and for a lot of these, especially in even our space where the technology’s not here, it’s offshore, you can’t get the benefit. You can’t get a tax break. So if you look at other countries where, you know, SMEs or people have actually started up some type of new business that is a new concept, they’ve been able to get that break and that enables them to grow.

 

I mean, the Googles of the world and all of these type of guys. You know, this is something that the government should really have a better look at and say, “Okay. We’ve got these incentives, these grants, and R&Ds, but if the R&D grant is only working for if the R&D’s done here, how can I do that when the R&D doesn’t come from here?” What you want to say is, “Okay. Are they taking R&D from offshore and then putting it in here so that then they can develop their own R&D here?”