Are you actually doing eligible R&D?
A lot of people doing genuinely innovative work still don’t meet the R&D Tax Incentive definition. The claim usually falls over because the story sounds commercial, not experimental.
On their own, these don’t make it eligible
- “It’s never been done in Australia”
- “It’s a world-first"
- “We made mistakes”
- “Customers didn’t like it
- “No one bought it”
- “We lost money”
- “We researched the market”
- “We spent ages choosing equipment”
The DIY guide shows you how to write this in a way that actually matches the program, with a worked example and templates.
If you’re looking at the R&D Tax Incentive but you want to do it yourself, you’re not alone. Plenty of businesses have eligible work, they just don’t want to spend weeks guessing how to write it up.
A good R&D tax consultant can absolutely add value. But if your claim is smaller, paying $10k+ can feel hard to justify. Especially if you’re still figuring out whether you’ve actually got eligible R&D.
That’s why we put this together. A step-by-step DIY guide that walks you through the AusIndustry registration and what evidence actually matters. Templates included. Worked example included. Instant access for $297.
What You Get In The DIY Kit
This kit gives you a step-by-step way to prepare your AusIndustry R&D Tax Incentive registration properly, without guessing what to write or how to structure it.
It breaks down each section in plain English, with examples of what a strong answer looks like and what usually gets people into trouble.
It also includes:
- Sample AusIndustry application
- R&D budget spreadsheet (Excel)
- Evidence prompts
How this DIY kit helps you lodge with confidence
f you’re doing this yourself, the hard part isn’t typing into the portal. It’s knowing what to include, what to leave out, and how to explain your work in a way that matches the program rules.
This kit gives you a proven structure to follow, plus examples so you’re not starting from a blank page. You’ll see how to describe your technical uncertainty, your experiments, and your results in plain English.
You’ll also get prompts for the evidence that matters (so you don’t finish the write-up and realise you’ve got nothing to back it up).
Before you buy, read what other businesses say
Why listen to me on the R&D Tax Incentive?
We do this all day. Bulletpoint has helped businesses lodge 500+ R&D claims across software, manufacturing and a bunch of other industries.
And we’re not guessing. We’ve seen what AusIndustry and the ATO tend to push back on, and what evidence holds up when questions get asked later.
If you’re doing it DIY, this guide gives you the structure and wording to do it properly.
Why I made the DIY R&D Tax Incentive kit
“I kept seeing good businesses miss out because they didn’t know how to explain their work in ‘AusIndustry language’. This guide fixes that.”
Ben Cusack – Bulletpoint
What’s at risk if you get it wrong?
With the R&D Tax Incentive, what you register with AusIndustry needs to line up with what you actually did and what you can prove. If the write-up is vague, inconsistent, or reads like “commercial progress”, that’s when you tend to get follow-up questions.
Here’s what can go wrong:
- You can miss the claim entirely – if you miss the AusIndustry registration deadline (for a 30 June year end, it’s typically 30 April).
- Changes after lodgement are limited – after the deadline you can generally only vary to remove activities or adjust timing, not add new stuff.
- Reviews cost real time – even when you’re eligible, a messy write-up can create weeks of back-and-forth pulling evidence together
- Repayments and penalties are possible – if the ATO later finds ineligible expenditure or a shortfall, you may need to repay the offset, plus interest, and penalties that depend on behaviour (often discussed in % terms like 25% / 50% / 75% of the shortfall).
500+ R&D claims supported
Ben was incredibly helpful & insightful in understanding the grant opportunities & suitability for my company
Very responsive, speedy, practical and professional. Great content on their site and youtube channel to help navigate the murky world of grants!
Ben gave me game changing advice before any discussion around fees. Unusually good customer experience in these times.
What the Small Business Ombudsman found about R&D reviews
In 2019, the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman looked at how R&D compliance activity was affecting small businesses. A few themes came up again and again.
Late -
“In all cases, this compliance activity was retrospective and commenced several years after the relevant R&D was undertaken and the R&DTI refund received and spent.
Penalties -
“Often these affected businesses were required by the ATO to repay the R&DTI in full, with a severe penalty applied.
Cashflow -
“This has had a devastating impact on the businesses involved, with some saying they face financial ruin.
Reduced -
“Others have discontinued or scaled down their R&D efforts in Australia and reduced their R&D staff.
Genuine -
“Most of these small and family businesses were genuine in their belief they were undertaking R&D; their claims were totally justified and they had already invested the money back into the business.
Cancelled -
“Others have discontinued or scaled down their R&D efforts in Australia and reduced their R&D staff.
This is exactly why the DIY kit focuses so much on how you write it up, and what evidence you keep as you go.
Ready to stop guessing?
If you’re doing the R&D Tax Incentive DIY, the risk isn’t the portal. It’s the write-up. That’s what determines whether your work sounds like eligible R&D, or just normal business progress.
This kit gives you a structure to follow, examples of strong answers, and prompts for the evidence you’ll want later. So you can lodge with confidence and get back to running the business.
What is the difference?
In plain English, this is where people get stuck:
- Business - You want to develop a new product
- Government - you need to generate new knowledge
I help identify what you are doing and relate it to the government criteria
- What should my hypothesis be?
- What is the difference between core and supporting?
- What is my time worth?
- How should I pay myself as an associate?
- Can I engage an Australian company that has R&D staff overseas?
- What if I sell a prototype?
- How to include R&D done overseas as eligible R&D?
- What if I get a grant for some of the R&D work?
- How much will I get back?
- Should I set up another company to get the higher rebate of 43.5%?
- What is the process to get the rebate?
- Are you actually doing eligible R&D?
Can you write a proper hypothesis?
AusIndustry doesn’t want marketing language. They want you to explain what you were trying to prove (or disprove), and how you tested it. For non-scientists, this is usually the hardest part.
Here are a few examples of what isn’t a hypothesis:
- Whether or not people will use your app?
- Will your app be helpful?
- Will it be cheap to make?
- Can it work on mobile phones?
- Will it save people money?
- Will it help people?
What AusIndustry actually asks you to write now
Years ago, you could get away with a broad “describe the project” write-up. Not anymore. The registration questions push you to explain your work like an experiment, not a product story.
For each core activity, you’ll typically need to cover:
- Hypothesis – what you expected would happen, and why
- Experiment / method – what you actually did to test it
- Results – what you measured or observed
- Conclusions – what you learned and what changed
- New knowledge – what was generated that wasn’t already known or obvious
- Why it wasn’t obvious upfront – what sources you checked, and why a competent professional couldn’t have confidently predicted the outcome
How R&D registrations are assessed now
AusIndustry doesn’t just want a broad project description. They want your core activities linked clearly to a hypothesis, the experiments you ran, the results, and the new knowledge you created.
The part that trips people up is core vs supporting. If you accidentally describe supporting work as a core activity, you can end up with follow-up questions later and parts of the claim may not stack up.
This kit shows you how to structure the write-up so it matches what the registration questions are really asking.
Claimed before and it went fine?
I hear this a lot.
Most claims aren’t “approved”. They’re registered. And the real test is whether the story and records would hold up if someone asked questions later.
The DIY kit is built to help you write it up properly and keep the right evidence. So you’re not relying on luck.
© Bulletpoint. Built for people who hate paperwork but like sleeping at night.
