Quick answer: A first R&D Tax Incentive claim is not one filing — it is two separate lodgments with two different regulators, in a fixed order. First you register your R&D activities with AusIndustry (via the R&DTI customer portal on business.gov.au), within 10 months after the end of your income year. Then you claim the R&D tax offset in your company tax return with the ATO, using your registration number. You cannot claim at the ATO for activities you have not first registered. You self-assess eligibility at every step.
Updated 20 July 2026 — the 2026–27 Federal Budget announced proposed R&DTI changes for income years starting on or after 1 July 2028. These changes are not yet law; this article describes the current rules unless stated otherwise.
A common first-time misconception is that the R&D Tax Incentive (R&DTI) is a single form completed as part of the company tax return. It is not. It is a two-step, two-regulator process, and the order is fixed — register the relevant R&D activities first, then claim with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). You must register the relevant activities and receive the registration number before lodging the R&D claim with the ATO, and missing the registration deadline can restrict your ability to claim.
This is a common first-timer misunderstanding, so it is worth de-mystifying properly. This piece is about the process — the annual lodgment cycle and its order — not about whether your company or activities qualify (which we cover separately in our Insights on eligibility) or how large the benefit is (covered in our Insights on the offset amount). Below we map the full annual cycle — who you file with, in what order, by when, and what actually lands in your account — so you can self-assess your sequencing with confidence. A note on where we sit: Ignition Research is a Registered Research Service Provider (RSP000047), based at Lot Fourteen in Adelaide. Our role is to help companies plan and conduct R&D activities and maintain supporting technical records within our registered research fields — not to act as your tax agent or determine your tax position. Everything below is general information about the process; the figures and rules belong to the ATO, AusIndustry and the legislation, and you should self-assess and seek your own tax advice.
The Short Answer: Two Lodgments, Two Regulators, One Order
If you remember nothing else, remember this sequence:
1. Register your R&D activities with AusIndustry
Register with AusIndustry (part of the Department of Industry, Science and Resources) through the R&DTI customer portal on business.gov.au. This is a standalone application, separate from your tax return.
2. Claim the R&D tax offset in your company income tax return with the ATO
Complete the R&D tax incentive schedule and quote the registration number AusIndustry issued you.
As business.gov.au puts it, companies "must be registered with AusIndustry before they are able to claim the R&D Tax Incentive in their annual income tax return" (business.gov.au, Apply for the R&D Tax Incentive). Registration does not itself pay you anything — it is the gate. The benefit is then claimed in the tax return; depending on which offset you fall into, it is paid to you as a refund, reduces the tax you owe, or is carried forward to a later year. Skip the gate, and there is nothing valid to claim.
One more framing point that trips people up: registration is per income year. You do not register once and claim forever. Every income year in which you want to claim the R&DTI for your R&D activities, you must register that year's activities. For a running R&D program, that means an annual rhythm, not a one-off event.
Step 1: Register Your R&D Activities with AusIndustry
Registration is where you tell AusIndustry, in writing, what R&D you did and why it meets the legislated definitions. You self-assess your activities into two categories the law draws:
Core R&D activities: experimental activities whose outcome cannot be known or determined in advance on the basis of current knowledge, information or experience, but can only be determined by applying a systematic progression of work based on principles of established science and proceeding from hypothesis to experiment, observation and evaluation, leading to logical conclusions — conducted for the purpose of generating new knowledge (ITAA 1997 s 355-25).
Supporting R&D activities: activities directly related to core R&D activities. Where an activity produces, or is directly related to producing, goods or services, or is one of the activities excluded from being a core R&D activity, it qualifies only if undertaken for the dominant purpose of supporting core R&D activities (ITAA 1997 s 355-30).
You register both, activity by activity, in the R&DTI customer portal. There is no fee to register, and the department issues you a registration number once your activities are registered. That number is the thread that ties Step 1 to Step 2.
The deadline gate — 10 months, per income year
This is the hard edge of the whole cycle. The statutory deadline to register your activities is 10 months after the end of your company's income year in which the activities took place (business.gov.au, Apply for the R&D Tax Incentive). For a standard 30 June year-end, that puts the deadline at 30 April the following year. Miss it and your options narrow sharply. Extensions of time are generally capped at 92 days after the statutory deadline (business.gov.au — Request an extension or variation). See the registration deadline.
Step 2: Claim the Offset in Your Company Tax Return (ATO)
Once you hold a registration number, the benefit is claimed through the ATO. You complete the R&D tax incentive schedule, which attaches to your company income tax return, and you carry the AusIndustry registration number across so the two records reconcile. The timing of this step follows your ordinary tax-return lodgment — there is no separate ATO "R&D deadline"; it rides with the return.
How the benefit lands depends on which offset you fall into, which is set by your aggregated turnover:
Refundable offset: For R&D entities with aggregated turnover under $20 million that are not controlled by one or more income-tax-exempt entities. The rate is your company tax rate plus 18.5 percentage points — 43.5% for a 25% base-rate entity. Critically, it is refundable: if the offset exceeds the tax you owe (common for a company in losses), the balance is paid to you as a cash refund (business.gov.au, Overview of the R&D Tax Incentive).
Non-refundable offset: For other eligible entities (turnover $20 million or more, or those controlled by income-tax-exempt entities). The rate is your company tax rate plus an R&D intensity premium: +8.5 points on R&D up to 2% of total expenditure, and +16.5 points above 2%. It reduces tax payable, with any excess carried forward to later years. A $150 million R&D expenditure threshold applies to the premium (ATO, Rates of R&D tax incentive offset).
For a first-timer, the practical takeaway is that the same claim can mean a cash refund for a pre-revenue startup or a reduced tax bill for a profitable company — a distinction we unpack in refundable vs non-refundable offset.
The Full-Year Timeline: What Happens When
Here is the cycle laid out for a company on a standard 1 July–30 June income year. Adjust the dates if you have a substituted accounting period:
Phase
When (30 June year-end)
What you do
Regulator
Conduct & document R&D
Throughout the income year
Run eligible activities; keep contemporaneous records tying costs to activities
— (your records)
Year end
30 June
Close off the income year; total your eligible R&D expenditure
—
Register activities
By 30 April (10 months after year-end)
Lodge the registration application in the R&DTI customer portal; receive registration number
AusIndustry
Claim the offset
With your company tax return
Complete the R&D schedule and quote the registration number
ATO
Benefit applied
After the return is lodged/assessed
Offset reduces tax payable; a refundable offset's excess may be refunded through the company's tax assessment, while a non-refundable offset's excess is carried forward
ATO
The ordering trap: Registration must precede (or at least be in place for) the tax claim. You can do the mental work of both steps early, but you cannot validly lodge the ATO claim for activities that were never registered with AusIndustry.
What Can Trip Up a First-Timer
Missing the 10-month registration deadline: This is a significant procedural risk. Extensions are generally capped at 92 days after the statutory deadline. Diarise the deadline the day the year ends.
Assuming the tax return alone is enough: The R&D schedule references a registration number for a reason. No registration, no valid claim.
Thin or absent contemporaneous records: The rules require you to show how activities meet the core/supporting definitions and how costs relate to them — recorded as you go, not reconstructed later (see what a Registered Research Service Provider does).
Misjudging the minimum spend: Total notional R&D deductions generally need to be at least $20,000. Where total notional deductions are below $20,000, an offset may still be available for eligible expenditure incurred to an RSP.
Assuming any company qualifies as an R&D entity: The incentive is only available to an eligible R&D entity — broadly, a body corporate incorporated under Australian law, a foreign-incorporated body corporate that is an Australian resident, or certain foreign corporations carrying on business through an Australian permanent establishment. Income-tax-exempt entities are not eligible.
Treating eligibility as automatic: Registering an activity is a self-assessment, not a pre-approval. AusIndustry can review activities after the fact; the burden of substantiating eligibility on review stays with you.
Worked Example: A First-Time Claimant's Cycle
The numbers below are illustrative and hypothetical — they show the sequence, not a guaranteed outcome.
Imagine an Adelaide software company on a 30 June year-end. During the 2025–26 income year it runs a genuinely uncertain experimental development project and, self-assessing against the legislation, records:
Through 2025–26: It conducts the R&D and keeps records mapping $180,000 in salaries, contractor costs and consumables to specific core and supporting activities.
By 30 April 2027 (10 months after 30 June 2026): It registers those activities in the R&DTI customer portal and receives a registration number from AusIndustry.
With its 2025–26 company tax return: It completes the R&D schedule, quotes the registration number, and claims the refundable offset.
Outcome (illustrative): Because turnover is under $20 million and the company is not controlled by income-tax-exempt entities, the refundable offset applies at 43.5% for a 25% base-rate entity — $180,000 × 43.5% ≈ $78,300. Any resulting refund depends on the completed tax calculation and ATO assessment.
This is why the refundable offset matters so much to first-time, pre-revenue claimants: you may be able to claim the R&DTI in a loss year — where the offset is refundable, the offset may result in a refundable amount through the company's tax assessment. That depends on your self-assessed eligibility and on clearing both lodgment gates in order.
Where to Get It Right (and When an RSP Fits)
Two anchors keep a first claim honest. First, self-assess against the source: the definitions of eligible core and supporting activities live in the legislation (ITAA 1997, Division 355), and business.gov.au walks through eligibility in plain English. Start with the R&D Tax Incentive overview for the concepts, then check every date and figure against the official page for your income year.
Second, know where an RSP fits. As a Registered Research Service Provider, Ignition Research can assist companies to plan and conduct R&D activities and maintain supporting technical records within our registered research fields. Where expenditure is incurred to an RSP that is not an associate of the R&D entity, for services within a research field for which the RSP is registered, that expenditure may qualify for the R&D tax offset even where the usual $20,000 threshold is not met. This is a different role from a registered tax agent, and the company remains responsible for self-assessing its eligibility.
A note on the horizon: the 2026–27 Federal Budget announced proposed R&DTI changes for income years starting on or after 1 July 2028. The current rules will continue to apply unless and until amending legislation takes effect. As announced in the Budget materials, the changes include increasing the offset for eligible core R&D activities and changing the treatment of supporting R&D activities; reducing the R&D intensity threshold to 1.5%; increasing the aggregated-turnover threshold for the higher refundable offset to $50 million, while limiting refundability to firms operating for less than 10 years; increasing the maximum expenditure cap from $150 million to $200 million; and increasing the minimum expenditure threshold from $20,000 to $50,000, with businesses undertaking R&D projects below $50,000 required to work with recognised research organisations. See our Budget 2026 reforms explainer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Do I register with AusIndustry or the ATO first?
A: AusIndustry first. You must register your R&D activities with AusIndustry (via the R&DTI customer portal on business.gov.au) before you can claim the offset in your company tax return with the ATO. The registration number from Step 1 is quoted in the ATO R&D schedule in Step 2. You cannot claim at the ATO for unregistered activities.
Q: What is the deadline to register R&D activities?
A: Ten months after the end of your company's income year. For a 30 June year-end, that is 30 April the following year. The deadline is per income year, so you re-register each year you conduct eligible R&D. Extensions after the statutory deadline are limited, so treat 10 months as a firm constraint.
Q: Is the R&D Tax Incentive one application or two?
A: Two. It is a two-step, two-regulator process: (1) register activities with AusIndustry, then (2) claim the R&D tax offset in your company income tax return with the ATO. They are separate lodgments in a fixed order, not a single form.
Q: Can I claim the R&DTI if my company made a loss in its first year?
A: You may be able to. For an R&D entity with aggregated turnover under $20 million that is not controlled by one or more income-tax-exempt entities, the offset is refundable — at 43.5% for a 25% base-rate entity — so if it exceeds the tax payable, the balance can be paid as a cash refund. You still self-assess eligibility and clear both lodgment gates; figures are illustrative.
Sources & Further Reading
Apply for the R&D Tax Incentive — business.gov.au
Overview of the R&D Tax Incentive — business.gov.au
Check if you are eligible for the R&DTI — business.gov.au
Request an extension or variation on your R&D Tax Incentive application — business.gov.au
What does the Budget mean for your business? — business.gov.au
ITAA 1997, Division 355 (R&D) — legislation.gov.au
Related: R&D Tax Incentive overview · The registration deadline · Refundable vs non-refundable offset · What a Registered Research Service Provider does
Getting the sequence and deadlines right can help avoid delays and reduce the risk of losing access to otherwise available claims. If you need technical R&D support before registration, talk to Ignition Research. As a Registered Research Service Provider at Lot Fourteen in Adelaide, we can assist with R&D activities and supporting technical records within our registered RSP scope. Your company remains responsible for self-assessment, while tax treatment and lodgment should be addressed with your registered tax agent. Get in touch.
This article is general information from a Registered Research Service Provider about the R&D Tax Incentive. It is not tax, legal or financial advice; eligibility depends on your circumstances and you should self-assess and seek your own advice.
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