Technical uncertainty register
For each work package, we document the technical question we were trying to answer, why the answer was not obvious from existing knowledge or commercial off-the-shelf solutions, and the experimental path we took.
R&D Tax Incentive
A structural reason to build in Australia.
The Australian R&D Tax Incentive (RDTI) — administered jointly by AusIndustry and the ATO — can return a meaningful portion of eligible software development expenditure to your business. This is a benefit you do not have when you commission a build offshore.
We are software engineers, not tax agents. What follows is a plain-English orientation; the rates and rules below are published by the Australian Government and your eventual claim should be lodged by a registered R&D tax agent.
The rates, as published
What the program currently returns.
Source: business.gov.au and the ATO. We cite these — we do not set them.
Aggregated turnover < $20M
43.5%
Refundable tax offset on eligible R&D expenditure. Refundable means it can be paid as cash where the offset exceeds the company's tax liability — particularly relevant for pre-revenue startups.
Aggregated turnover ≥ $20M
38.5% +
Non-refundable base rate, with a premium tier for higher R&D intensity. The effective benefit depends on the company's tax rate and the intensity of R&D spend relative to total expenditure.
Rates current as published by AusIndustry / ATO. Eligibility, registration and claim mechanics change from year to year — always verify with a registered R&D tax agent before relying on a number.
What typically qualifies
Eligibility, in software terms.
The RDTI tests for "core" and "supporting" R&D activities. The legal definitions are precise — what follows is the engineering shape of what tends to qualify and what tends not to.
Tends to qualify
- Building a novel system architecture where the existing literature does not give a known-good answer
- Algorithm or model development where the result cannot be predicted in advance
- Performance, scale or reliability work where the outcome requires experimentation to confirm
- Integration patterns where the technical path involves genuine trial-and-error
- AI/ML work where the model behaviour is itself the experiment
Tends not to qualify
- Pure UI restyles with no underlying technical uncertainty
- Integration of well-documented third-party APIs where the path is obvious
- Bug fixes, maintenance and routine deployment work
- Market research, sales, marketing and routine business analysis
- Work conducted outside Australia (overseas activity needs a separate application)
How we help — the truthful version
Project artefacts your tax agent can actually use.
We will not file a claim for you — that is your tax agent's job. What we can do is structure the project documentation so the claim is defensible, the contemporaneous evidence is there, and the eligible vs ineligible split is computable rather than estimated.
Experiment logs
Branch-level evidence of the hypothesis-test-result loop: what we tried, what happened, what we learnt. Git history is the spine; ADRs (architecture decision records) are the flesh.
Time and effort allocation
Engineer time tracked per work package so the eligible vs ineligible split is computable, not estimated.
Resource and expenditure summary
Cleanly separated invoices that map onto the eligible activity categories — so your tax agent does not spend $5k reconstructing it from emails.
Why this matters
The structural argument for building in Australia.
🇦🇺
AU-conducted build
- R&D Tax Incentive eligibility for the Australian-conducted portion
- Australian Privacy Principles compliance designed in, not bolted on
- Data sovereignty by default — Australian hosting region
- AEST working hours, no overnight queue
- Australian legal recourse if something goes wrong
🌐
Pure offshore build
- No access to the AU R&D Tax Incentive on overseas-conducted work
- Privacy / sovereignty obligations harder to evidence and defend
- Cross-border data flow disclosures and contracts required
- Timezone lag — multiple business days per round-trip on tricky questions
- Limited legal recourse if delivery or quality falls over
Important. This page is general information about a public Australian Government program. It is not tax advice. It is not financial advice. Eligibility for the R&D Tax Incentive depends on the specific facts of your business, the activities you conduct and how those activities are documented. Before relying on anything here, speak to a registered R&D tax agent. We can refer you to firms we have worked with — that is the limit of what we, as software engineers, are equipped to do on this topic.