“The research tax credit, a device to be reviewed for more efficient private R&D”

CHow to reform the research tax credit (CIR), which has become, with its 6 billion euros of annual expenditure, the first tax niche in France, and whose existing evaluations show the limits, given its objective of increasing the research and development (R&D) effort, as shown in a report by the National Commission for the Evaluation of Innovation Policies (Cnepi)? In this period of tense budgetary debate, one wonders if the idea of ​​greening the CIR currently circulating does not risk leading at best to a “greenwashing” of public expenditure in favor of companies, at worst to a gas plant, under the guise of developing private research.

Let us briefly recall the process of declaration to the CIR: to benefit from a tax credit, companies fill in the appropriate tax form and justify the admissibility of their request by setting out the details of the projects concerned in a file whose form is « libre ». The scientific conformity of a sample of these projects is the subject of an evaluation by independent experts for the Ministry of Higher Education and Research (MESR), which determines tax eligibility and may, if it is turns out to be negative, lead to adjustments. Even if the number of checks is low, the risk is perceived as real by many companies.

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Indeed, for companies, the reporting process comes up against significant obstacles: identifying what is part of a research activity is not obvious. Beyond the image of the scientist in a white coat in front of his test tubes hide a multitude of other activities that can be described as R&D and whose eligibility is questioned during the procedure for declaring expenses to the CIR by the ‘company. Feedback from the field (as it appears in the research we have carried out) shows that there is often a discrepancy between companies’ perception of what an R&D activity is and the feedback given to them by the administration on the eligibility of their expenses.

A blind spot

The identification of eligible expenses is therefore an important and costly task for companies, so much so that they often call on an innovation consultant to better prepare this “confrontation” with the administrations responsible for the CIR. The dossier describing the research project must therefore be carefully prepared and correspond to the usual standards for identifying what is science and what is not.

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