Government Grants & R&D Tax Incentive

Businesses often miss out on government support they could have had – not because they were ineligible, but because nobody checked, the records were not kept, or the deadline passed. Depending on your industry, what you spend money on, who you employ and how big you are, there may be a grant, rebate or tax incentive that fits. We help you find out, plan the spending and records around it, and prepare the application and the claim.

The R&D Tax Incentive

The R&D Tax Incentive (R&DTI) offsets part of the cost of eligible research and development. It is open to companies in any industry and of any size, and it is jointly run: the Department of Industry, Science and Resources registers the R&D activities, and the ATO processes the claim in the company tax return.

What matters in practice:

• It is for companies. The claimant must be an eligible R&D entity – broadly a company incorporated in Australia, or certain foreign companies that are Australian residents for tax or carry on business here through a permanent establishment. A sole trader or partnership cannot claim it.
• The activities must be genuine R&D. Core R&D activities are experiments whose outcome cannot be known in advance, carried out to generate new knowledge. Supporting activities must be directly related to them. Some activities are excluded altogether.
• It is self-assessed. Registration does not confirm your activities are eligible – you are responsible for that, and the department and the ATO can review a claim before or after it is registered.
• Records are everything. You need records made before, during and after each activity: what you were trying to find out, what you tried and what you spent.
• There is a deadline. You must register within 10 months of the end of the income year in which the R&D took place.

For the year you are registering now, companies with an aggregated turnover under $20 million get a refundable offset equal to their corporate tax rate plus an 18.5% premium (checked on business.gov.au, October 2026). Our post on the R&D Tax Incentive covers the rates, the minimum spend and the registration deadline in more detail. The 2026–27 Budget announced changes to the program that are due to start from 1 July 2028; until then the current rules apply.

Export Market Development Grants

The Export Market Development Grants (EMDG) program, run by Austrade, provides matched funding to eligible Australian small and medium businesses for marketing and promotion that helps them create, develop and expand foreign markets. Support is offered in tiers, depending on whether a business is ready to export, exporting within existing markets or moving into new ones.

Rounds open and close, so check business.gov.au for the current status. If you are planning overseas marketing, it is still worth keeping the records an application would need, so you are ready when a round opens.

Other grants and offsets

Programs open and close all the time, at federal and state level. A few we have written about:

• the Digital Games Tax Offset, a 30% refundable offset for eligible Australian game development expenditure
• the SafeWork NSW small business rebate for safety equipment
• energy-saving upgrades and the support available for them

The government's own finder at business.gov.au lists what is open. We help you work out whether a program fits and whether it is worth the effort of applying.

How we help

1. Eligibility – we look at the business and the program rules and tell you honestly whether it is worth pursuing.
2. Plan the spending and the records – grants and incentives reward businesses that can show what they spent and why. We set up the records in your books so the evidence builds as you go.
3. Prepare the application – the registration or application, and the supporting documents.
4. Claim it correctly – the R&D claim goes into the company tax return, and grants have their own tax treatment. We handle both, along with your company tax return and bookkeeping.

For technical R&D descriptions, many companies also work with a specialist R&D adviser or engineer. We are happy to work alongside them on the financial side.

What it costs

Grant and incentive work is charged at our hourly rates, which range from $220 to $420 an hour plus GST depending on the accountant. We will tell you the expected cost before we start, so you can weigh it against what the program is likely to be worth. See our price list.

Questions people ask