Companies claiming R&D tax credits have probably come across the phrase "competent professional." It sits at the heart of HMRC's definition of R&D: for your work to qualify, the scientific or technological uncertainty you were resolving must not have been "readily deducible by a competent professional working in the field."
When you prepare your claim, you should be asking your experts to provide the details for your claim documentation. Your whole claim is based on their information, so getting the person right is the foundation of a robust, defensible claim.
Who counts as a competent professional?
A competent professional is someone with genuine expertise in the relevant scientific or technological field. They should be able to:
- Judge what does or doesn't represent an advance on the current state of knowledge
- Identify where R&D activity begins and ends within a project
- Confirm why the uncertainty your project faced wasn't easily resolved
They would have worked directly on the project and helped pull together the technical information behind the claim. Their understanding of the project’s field, the state of the art, the advance, the uncertainty and the work your company did will be included in your submission.
Qualifications are one indicator, but they're not the whole picture. Someone can qualify as a competent professional entirely through experience, without academic or professional credentials. What matters is that they have a solid grounding in the relevant field and can speak to its state of the art with authority.
Good evidence of competence might include:
- Relevant academic or professional qualifications
- Years of hands-on experience in the specific field
- A record of publication or research
- Industry awards or other recognised contributions to the field
- Examples of similar projects previously worked on
Why the "competent professional" test exists
R&D tax relief is designed to reward genuine innovation, not the process of catching up with your industry. The competent professional test is how HMRC draws that line.
Without it, a junior developer encountering a standard integration problem for the first time might describe the work as deeply uncertain, when in practice any experienced engineer in the field would know exactly how to solve it. The test anchors your claim to the wider state of knowledge in your field, not your team's individual starting point.
This is also why the test connects directly to what counts as an advance in science or technology. Someone with the right expertise needs to be able to confirm that your project was pushing beyond what was generally known or achievable, not just new to you.
Professionals with seniority, experience and expertise
It’s easy to default to naming your most senior person as the competent professional, assuming seniority equals expertise. Your competent professional isn’t necessarily the person in charge, nor even the person with the most experience at the company. Your expert is the person who knows the most about the specific project and its field.
Here's a straightforward example:
Company A is a retail business that commissions Company B, a software development firm, to build a new stock management system. Company A's CEO has no background in software. Company B's CEO left active development years ago and has limited familiarity with the technologies involved. The project is actually led by a technical lead at Company B, who has significant experience in stock management software and is the person who identifies that the work requires a genuine technological advance.
In that scenario, the competent professional is the technical lead, not either CEO. The relevant question is always: who has the field-specific expertise to make the call on whether the uncertainty was genuine?
What HMRC actually looks for
HMRC has made the competent professional a standard line of enquiry in compliance checks. Though the professional doesn’t need to be named at any point in your Additional Information Form (AIF), you should retain their details in case HMRC queries your claim.
The good news is that you don't need pages of biography. A short summary per person is enough, covering their qualifications, relevant experience, and area of specialism. Here are some examples of the kind of detail that works:
Jane Bloggs, Principal Researcher: BSc Biochemistry, MSc Biochemistry, 15 years of experience in pharmaceutical development, expertise in oncology and primary research.
Joe Bloggs, Senior Software Developer: BSc Computer Science, Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist, 10 years in IT with expertise in CRM systems development.
Jim Bloggs, Chief Technology Officer: 30 years of experience in manufacturing commercial glass products, including comparable projects such as the development of laminated curved glass.
Key takeaways
- The competent professional test exists to distinguish genuine R&D from routine work. If a knowledgeable expert in your field could have easily resolved your uncertainty, it's unlikely to qualify.
- Seniority doesn't equal competence. Pick the person with the most relevant field expertise, not the most impressive job title.
- Experience counts as much as qualifications. Someone qualified entirely through practice can meet the standard.
- HMRC queries this routinely. Having a clear, brief summary of your key technical people ready before you're asked is worth doing.
- The competent professional shapes more than just uncertainty. They're also the right person to define where your R&D project starts and ends, and to confirm the advance your work was seeking.
Getting this right from the outset makes for a more robust claim and a much smoother process if HMRC does come back with questions. If you'd like help identifying your competent professional and building your technical narrative, get in touch and we'll walk you through it.
